Friends for dinner.

We've been lax this weekend. Not for us the boring and digging to produce large spaces for fence posts although Luke did buy an auger to make the task easier. I thought we were going to cut down the conifers to about five feet tall so we could prise them out of the ground (the new neighbours want to build an extension and are worried about the roots; we don't mind keeping them or taking them out but for neighbourly relations we are going to get them out)

Instead we went to town and I spent half the day trying on clothes for our upcoming holiday.

Last night, our friends, Tim and Michelle came over for a meal and Tim asked to walk around the garden. Whilst I went in one direction with Michelle, who asked if she'd put her foxglove in too sunny a postilion and that was why it had failed (I explained that foxgloves will work in shade or sun but will grow taller in shade). Tim went straight to the veg patch. Originally Tim and Luke had an allotment together (you can see their story at weeditandreap.co.uk) but after a few years we decided that we wanted a garden to incorporate a vegetable patch. I had this long held and much cherished memory of plump sweetcorn, freshly picked from my grandparent's garden before being stripped of it's leaves and plunged into boiling water to end up in front of me bathed in butter and cracked pepper all within twenty minutes. I've heard that the sugar in sweetcorn turn to starch after twenty minutes so the thought of picking produce and having it on our plates ten minutes later is too appealing. Not that the peas will last that long, they will be sampled straight from the pod whilst I am standing in the middle of a row of pea shoots.

Our roses, whilst still not planted up, are bursting with buds and we had a few white and pink roses in a little tea glass on the dinner table. To be able to add our own produce in the shape of chubby carrots, tender peas, buttered potatoes and luscious courgettes will be even better. Just a few more months till our anticipated glut