In my little garden.

This house is definitely ganging up on me. Currently, it's the computer playing up, having added refusal to recognise the keyboard to refusal to print anything.

This means picture posts have been few and far between, blogger app not being willing to allow me to assign any kind of order to uploaded photos. But eventually, the choice becomes, blog with the photos out of order, or call time on the blog and retreat to a corner somewhere.

So here, in an annoyingly out-of-sequence fashion, is the story of tLP's garden.

A friend and I went out to a garden centre one day. And found a rather lovely raised bed. We thought this might in fact entice tLP away from the iPad and into the great outdoors.

It did.

Sadly, it came as a flat pack, with no assembly instructions, and no handily marked holes for inserting screws.

TLP and I spent a frustrating evening collecting blisters and achieving very little.

Then a friend came to our rescue and managed in 15 minutes what we had not managed in several hours the night before. Hurrah.

So tLP and I filled the new garden patch with soil. Lots of soil. 120 litres of all purpose compost, finely mixed with enough water to turn it into a slightly solid slurry (say that six times swiftly). And then tLP planted her vegetables. Purple broccoli, sugar peas, round carrots, and a giant strawberry plant.

And the sun shone, and the watering can moistened, and just two days after planting, the strawberry plant yielded its first fruits. And now tLP is gathering 1-2 strawberries a day. And one day I'll get a picture of a ripe one, freshly picked, but for now she's eating them as soon as she can reach them. Which is good too; anything which gets her eating something vaguely healthy without complaint is a Good Thing.

The peas are winding their way up some seriously abbreviated canes, the carrot tops are waving freely, and the purple broccoli is a very defiant green still. Planting density is around 9 times what's recommended. But it's just outside her bedroom window, and she can see it from her bed, and she loves it.

Here's hoping the vegetables grow as nicely as the strawberries. Question for those in the know; I can see for myself when the peas and broccoli will be ready, but how does one check the progress of the carrots?

Tia