The miricalgrow of life.

I'm expecting babies very shortly.

Isn’t it amazing that after nine months and several billion cells splitting, us human beans are able to make a mini us's.

Two eyes for watching television, two hands for playing play station, two feet for kicking people with on a Saturday night after drinking twenty pints of Stella. A mouth to swear with and ears to stick I-pod headphones in. Such is the miracle of reproduction and adolesance in our glorious twenty fist century thug land.

Only the other day I was in my local corner shop, three kids walked in and racially insulted the owner. Demanded he sell them Cigarettes and alcohol. I was happy to see Petre the owner flash his bat at them and practically threw them out.

Crikey - what has the world come to I thought? I must be getting old! Petre told me not to worry; he gets it all the time.

As I left the shop I thought to myself that When I was a kid back in the early eighties. We would have never in our wildest dreams done something like that, no way. We would have created a distraction and quietly just pinched a sherbet dip. No need for the insults.

I’m going off on one.....Back to the subject.

My babies by contrast have been ten months in making, it’s been a long and difficult conception, and in only a couple of weeks, I'm going to eat them with a cheesy béchamel.

Whoohoo, yep, I'm talking about my beloved brassica. Last night I made a very happy discovery - My Cauliflowers are finally heading up.

A few weeks back I blogged about these, so won’t repeat my self too much about the efforts involved.
I was considering giving up on them as my patience was running thin, and I need some space to plant out my gherkins. However, after much discussion about them with fellow plot holders, about these huge plants with nothing to show for them after so long, A few suggested that I might cut off a few of the outer leaves to stimulate/shock them a little bit.

Hesitant at first, because you are told they dislike conditions anything short of perfect. I decided to test this suggestion, and cut three to four mammoth leaves from a few of them. Michael keeps chickens and happily took these for them to peck on.

Any roads - A week later and I have half a dozen "farmer Fists" sized heads. The are very tightly packed and I am quietly confident that these are going to be beauties.

I picked off and disposed of several snails and bugs lurking in the bed. Looks like snail season has begun. Hosed them in Comfrey tea and threw in some blood and bones to the mix.

Another sight that brought a smile to my face, and will have my boys going mental do-lally is that we have a dozen strawberries turning from lime green to pink. Oh yes. Vanilla Ice-cream has been added to the shopping list.

The salad days are well and truly here now with Kos lettuce, sweet cut and come again, mountains of fresh spinach, radishes, basil, beet leaf, lambs lettuce, all year round salad and spring onions.

Turnips and Kohlrabi are beginning to fatten up nicely. I’m looking forward to a tagine couscous by my wife with these.

The over wintered onions, shallots and the not too rusty garlic continue to fatten up. What am I going to do with 200 onions? Maybe I'll take a load as a gift to Petre as payback for all those missing sherbet dips. He didn't escape the courgette glut last year and always asks my how my garden grows.