Ms Potter would approve: garden update

This cheeky little chap visits us every day, and is getting cheekier and more daring in his approaches to the house. Beatrix Potter gave them an undeservedly good press, but I have to confess I do find this one rather cute. He may be living a charmed life at the moment, so long as he sticks to eating grass, but he had better not start on our lettuces!

In the meantime, we are enjoying the novel pleasure of eating our own home-grown veg. Am I a very sad person to get excited at the sight of a cauliflower?

Freshly cut!

Men and Women at Work II (+ dog)

Easter Sunday: cold but bright. A diminished family party meet at the Red House for what has become a traditional gathering of Wards and Jensens. This year, Anna and family were at a wedding, and Kate is due to come tonight with Ted and Shay while Anna and Martin fly to Tokyo for another wedding. Geoff and Amanda arrived on Friday with Ryan and Evie, Daniel working in a pub over the weekend.

Avril came, and everybody weighed in to help. Signs were put up (Ryan's ambition is to be the man who puts out the cones on the motorway), stones and logs were moved, with only a small amount of swearing, and various bits of anatomy were revealed!

Meanwhile, Evie was determined to read outside, despite the cold, and Amanda did a heroic job untangling a total scrow of wool I intend to knit (I did a bit too). If we paid ourselves the minimum wage for it, it would have beed cheaper to have chucked it in the bin and taken a first class train to London to buy some wool from the Queen's knitting shop! But once you start, it becomes obsessive, and Amanda's excitement as she wound the last few strands up was truly moving.

The Constance Gardener- and the Michael

We are a three garden family. Other families have several cars, some even have second homes, but us, we have three gardens! We have a big stake in our daughters' gardens: there are many plants in theirs that originated from ours, and we frequently bomb off south to do a bit of a makeover. Having worked recently on the Southern Garden, and the Mid West Garden (in Swindon) we came back to the Northern Garden to find lots of weeds, but also many flowers. Our Garden Goddess, Avril, has done sterling work recently, and we are delighted with our replanted central bed with a mad mix of orange pink and red flowers. It shouldn't work, but it does!

The Southern Garden

The London garden. After a week of solid work, and a lot of luck with the weather, this was the result. A new bed created and one turfed over, a large number of new plants added to give summer colour as well as a tidy up of the existing beds. I am delighted with the result. More photos @ www.flickr.com/photos/amberimages/