Garden Glory

This is our garden.  The veggie part of it anyway.  When we first moved in the greenhouse was overgrown with a grapevine.  We picked the grapes and Jam is in the process of making wine out of it, I think he is going to bottle it soon, I hope, although we are sure it will taste rank.  Next to the greenhouse is a little cage which holds redcurrants and raspberries.  Rowan and I picked some raspberries yesterday and they were delicious.

When we got back from a week away at Jam's Aunty's making steps in her garden, we were overjoyed to find we had loads of broad beans, a few courgette's growing, mange tout, tomatoes, self seeded potatoes from probably about three years ago when Jam's grandad was last into his gardening. Massive turnip like radishes, sprouts, kale, artichokes, all growing up big and strong! Hoorah! Finally we get green fingers and without too much effort! Well, Jam does all the weeding and tending, I water occasionally, make tea and offer advice and I found some grey larvae on a kale plant and ripped it up, to Jam's horror, my thinking being that I needed to get whatever it was out of the garden quick so that it wouldn't attack the rest of the plants.  Jam reminded me that we should try and work out what it is and cure the plant rather than rip it up and I see his point, I think I was just tired and scared!

Listography - Decisions

Kate Takes 5 has a brilliant blog and a weekly listography themed this week on decisions. So without further ado, here are my top five best decisions...

1)  Learning to play the violin - after the initial stages of sounding like a cat being strangled and having to practise in the garden shed, even in winter, it has enriched my life completely, a highlight was being able to play in a cool dance band called Loonaloop and tour Australia...

2)  Marrying my husband was a grrrrreat decision, he also plays violin and makes instruments, he's made me a guitar and a wooden puppet of me each year for my birthday - that must be love!
(He's just bought in my dinner too, so beautifully presented...)

3)  Deciding to stop trying to fix my family's problems and concentrate on building my own, family that is, not problems....

4)  Being an instinctive parent, learning to trust my heart and love my family.

5)  Moving to the country - despite missing London boat life, this country lark is lovely and calm and green and peaceful and saving us lots of money so we can hopefully get our foot on the property market ladder and do lots of other exciting things, like maybe one day get back down under.

Trains...

My Mum was visiting her sister in Birmingham so we thought it would be a great idea if I jumped on the train with Rowan and went a couple of stops with her so she could coo over him and we could exchange gifts. 

Unfortunately we didn't plan for all the traffic, well we did plan for some traffic but not quite as much as there was and we missed the train, but as I was jumping out of the car to see if it had perhaps been delayed, Jam carried on driving thinking I was out and managed to run over my ankle.

I sat in the train station, the train had not been delayed, my ankle was throbbing but thankfully not broken, Rowan was half asleep and bewildered as Mummy burst into tears.  I was destroyed. Jam was mortified - 'I've just run over my wife!'  But never mind there was the return journey a week later, and for that train we were an hour early. 

Rowan loved being on the train, he insisted on me walking up and down the aisles so he could stop and chatter to all the other customers, flirt with the girls and eat the gentleman's newspaper.  He loved my Mum's wheelchair and was very interested in the guard's funny lollipop that he used to signal to the driver.

Cars...

Our kindly donated car, the lovely golf Red, is sadly on its last legs, well, wheels and feels a bit like a death trap to drive.  To get it through its next MOT it is not worth doing the work against the value of the car. So it served us well for nearly a year and we are sadly going to have to scrap it or try and sell it for parts. 
Luckily Jam's Dad used to be in the car trade and has helped us find another.  We were going to go for a Mercedes A class, not that that meant much to me, and it was a snotty green, or rather a distinctive and unusual colour.  It would have been nice to say we drive a Mercedes but that is not the case, for it was quite old and if the electrics went on it it would have cost too much to fix. So we've now got a Vauxhall Astra, more simply, a reliable green car, we've called him Verdi, with a really good roll on the Rrrrrr. I don't know why we feel the need to name our cars.
 We found Verdi on ebay, on viewing the car the boot wouldn't open, and the owner, an old man, 92, and his grandson who was probably the real driver of it considering the sort of 'young wasters' rubbish found down between the seats, decided to sell it to us off the site for a lower rate.  Deal.  Then it failed its MOT - great.  But Jam's Dad jumped to the rescue and we are up and running on the road again, for less than the price we'd originally bid.  Hoorah!
Saw a beautiful old triumph herald the other day, now that's a car I'd love to own....