Flowers for veg

No one really expects to be spending this much time watering in April, do they? This amazing weather has kept me out of an evening with the watering can. I've also been using every spare minute to get seeds into pots and into the ground. Those I ordered a few days ago arrived today and I wasted no time planting chillies, leeks, carrots and a new row of rocket.

While the leeks and chillies are in pots, the other seeds went straight into the garden. And, I have a new space for flowers. At the weekend, helped by husband and the full weight of a nearly-nine-year-old we managed to get out the roots of the privet hedge. The activity reminded me most of tooth extraction on a large scale; lots of digging around, waggling the stump and then pulling and twisting with all our might for the last heave.

Left behind was a decent space - about two foot wide running the width of the garden under the wall - but the soil was far from decent. Years of privet had reduced it to ghastly grey dust which even looked nutrition free. I dug in a bag of manure I've had hanging around a while but it's going to need a lot more than that. I daren't put veg in here. Who knows what accumulated stuff is in the soil and while the raised beds have new soil, this thin ground has been neglected.

Still, pondering what to do about this has sent me not unhappily back to the seed catalogues. What I need now is something to attract bees and bugs - the good ones that is. I'm starting with poached egg plant and a wild flower mix.