Hats off to Tom and Barbara

Like many other organically-infused thirtysomethings of the modern age, we’ve got a veg patch (in the sense that we’ve allocated a rectangular strip of garden for growing veg rather than we have a rectangular strip of garden with veg actually growing in it).

It’s a bloody slow business horticulture, and I’m an impatient man. What started off as a bank of mud was, for over a month, a resplendent, err… bank of mud, visually indistinguishable to how it looked when we popped a few optimistic seeds ‘neath its granular surface a few weeks earlier. For ages though – not a bloody sausage (not that sausages grow on trees. I may not be that green-fingered but an afternoon spent trailing round the gardening section of B&Q confirmed my suspicions that meat products can’t be grown from seed). This absence of sausages was matched by a notable absence of actual veg. I’d done my homework and was under no illusions about how long things would take; I didn’t expect a climbable beanstalk shooting up overnight, but it took an age before the tiniest bit of greenery restored some hope.

I’m happy to report though that now there are lettuces, tomato plants and straggly bit of greenery I’m desperately trying to convince people are spring onions. I’m hopeful that some of these may even survive being munched by ravenous slugs, trampled by the kids or shat on by the neighbour’s cat who seems to find our garden an excellent place to crimp one off. If so, I’ll likely be tucking into crisp, home-grown produce for only a singular evening meal (which all the waiting and watering is likely to produce), before the whole process starts again.

I don’t even like veg.