Martha's Marvellous Munchies

It's not often you get to do things for free, still less a whole weekend of them!  But a few weeks ago, for Graham's birthday, that's exactly what we managed to do.  Free sailing, tennis and swimming, accompanied by free desserts and strawberries and cream!  Graham was working on Saturday morning, which gave the boys and me time to decorate his birthday cake.  We presented it to him at lunchtime, along with a little liquid refreshment. For the afternoon, I thought it would be nice to do something a bit different.  Scanning the internet, I discovered that Burton Sailing Club had an open day, and we could go for a free ride on a sailing boat.  Perfect!  We headed down the road to Foremark Reservoir.  The very friendly club staff got us signed in and set up, and we all clambered into the motor boat to go catch a ride.  Unfortunately we'd picked the one moment of the day when the wind picked up and the rain came through.  Theo an...

Isn't it exciting when little seeds you've planted start cautiously unfurling stalks and leaves, and turning into proper plants?  Most of my vegetable planting is now done for the spring, so I thought I'd update you with what's in this year. I used some plastic sheets to turn my vegetable boxes into mini greenhouses, which I'd like to think helped with the germinating process.  One unexpected thing which sprouted were half a dozen courgette plants, which I assume are the same ones that never came up last year.  I transplanted them to some pots, where one has already been savaged by slugs. The seeds that I did expect were spring onions, carrots and rocket, which have duly come up in neat little rows.  I haven't tried carrots before; they're supposed to be good companions for spring onions in some mutually beneficial way, so I'll put in another couple of rows soon and see how they go. tiny spring onions and carrots tomatoes and rocket ...