I'm sure no one reads this anymore. But I'm going to keep going anyway...

I am convinced no one reads this. But never mind, it’s my little space and I’ll keep it going. There is lots to be updated here. There’s Luke, his first holiday, his third tooth and 30 consecutive steps; there’s the allotment (now officially renamed Lottie, as it is marginally easier to pronounce) – which is developing at a relatively speedy rate.

BUT, I’ll save some of it. The first holiday and the rest can wait until I have managed to upload the pictures onto flickr, which should be in a day or so. I know that this blog has become a catalogue of things I promise and never get round to, so maybe that’s an empty threat, but I’m halfway there already, so it shouldn’t be too much hassle!

Lottie. Ah, Lottie. I’ll be honest, allotments used to strike me as a bit of a waste of time. But after a year of Nikki and I spending a lot of our time inside looking after and playing with Luke, and me being cooped in an office all week, anything that means we’re outside for more than twenty minutes is very, very welcome!

That said, it’s not just getting out that made the allotment idea attractive. There is also the fact that we could produce our own organic fruit and veg without having to pay the excess amounts that supermarkets charge you for it. And now I am so far down the road to being a vegetarian (living and cooking and sharing meals with a veggie tends to mean that most of the food is veggie, and that’s not a bad thing), organic veg is becoming quite important to us – especially as it’s the only veg we can give Luke that’s guaranteed not to have anything obnoxious in it…

So, back in July, we got a plot. It’s pretty big, as you’ll see from the pictures that WILL be up on this [link]. There is a lot of work to do, but we already have a few things going in – there’s a group of herbs in one corner, which surround two strawberry plants, and last weekend we added some onions and cabbages, and then some rhubarbs too… We have a blueberry bush and two aubergine plants too… There is a long list of things to go in during the next month or so, and I have by no means got the memory to keep track of them, so I’ll mention them as they get planted.

I must mention, however, that we are – sadly – currently in a state of war.

With slugs.

I HATE the little beggars. And there are hundreds of the little things hiding in the long grass round the edge of the plot waiting for darkness. As soon as the sun falls and there’s no one around to work on the plot, they strike, ambushing the defenceless veggies like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve already lost what fruit we did have there and some of the leaves off cabbages, onions and rhubarb. Gits.

More soon… If you’re unlucky.