A good week away. The weather was mild and open. My vegetable plot as of yesterday morning may look, to the untutored eye, identical with its state when we were last there in December, but not so. I trundled three loads of manure home from the neighbouring field – you can see them if you peer. And even got some soil turned. I am not strong enough, or fit enough, or some combination of the two, to do very much heavy gardening at a time, so it was particularly gratifying to be able to bring a couple of days of March work forward into January. Below, right, a picture of my feeble efforts.

And I perfected this year’s seed orders, and will enter them via their various websites in the next couple of days. I wonder if the harvest will even pay for the seeds – but that’s not the way to look at it. My vegetables give me enormous pleasure, and healthy outdoor exercise. Their slightly wobbly green lines are very satisfactory to the eye, a tiny fragment of nature tamed. Any appearance they actually make on the table is pure bonus and of course, when I hit it right, incomparably delicious. Golf-ball sized beetroot cooked with their greens; freshly-dug potatoes with salt and pepper and butter…

The little pink noses of the rhubarb haven’t appeared yet, so I didn’t put the forcing pot in place.




Knitting

I didn’t finish the left sleeve of Rachel’s striped Koigu – picture tomorrow – but there are only 15 rows to go, so I should polish it off next time. I may, then, bring it back here for the excitements of the neck placket and collar and finishing: Strathardle is for curling up in front of the fire with mindless knitting – which means I need to get the next mindless knitting in place.

For some reason my blog comes up without its comments this morning; I hope they’re not lost forever. So I can’t thank by name whoever it was who suggested using dice to achieve randomness. Fibonacci is a tempting idea, too, especially as it’s Alexander we’re thinking of and he is a mathematician. Sometime soon I will pile my two Rowan eBay purchases together to see how the colours work, and may even try swatching some of Kaffe’s stripe ideas.

It’s nice to be back and get caught up with Swapna and Franklin and Joe. I’ll call on my other friends this morning.