Living the plan

This was the first weekend since I published my Grand Plan.  I can't say that I didn't work, but I did take more time off than usual, particularly as it was a Bank Holiday weekend.  We spent lots of time in the garden, the kids in the main bounced on the trampoline and kicked a ball about, whilst we did some much overdue gardening.  I love seeing a pretty garden and dream of a cottage garden full of delphiniums, foxgloves and roses in abundance.  However I long resigned myself to the fact that the back garden, for the time being is never going to be the place for delicate flowers, for anything to survive they need to be pretty resilient to a football and the trampling of small feet!  It is therefor full of geraniums, alchemilla mollis and the odd climbing and rambling rose.

As the weather was marvellous, we had our first BBQ of the year.  We had the most delicious new potatoes,  a fresh salad with vine tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, sugar snap peas, grapes and cucumber with a honey mustard dressing.  Vegetable skewers, which the children made. A selection of meats, my favourite was the chicken, I made a simple marinade of soy sauce, honey, ginger and garlic, the chicken was cut into small pieces and then skewered, it cooks very quickly and you have no worries of the dreaded raw BBQ chicken scenario.

Although we only have a small garden, we do grow a small selection of fruit, herbs and salad leaves.  We are looking forward to eating strawberries and raspberries this summer and I think this week a Rhubarb crumble will be on the menu..yum.  Andy and Poppy sowed some cut and come again salad leaf seeds in a pot, which I strongly recommend that you give a try.  We'll sow some more every two weeks for the next month or so and this supplies us with most of our salad leaves throughout the summer which saves us lots of pennies.

Before I go, I just wanted to say a huge thank you for all your lovely messages and kind words since I published my Grand Plan, they really do mean an awful lot!