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Hey hey hey!

I am making an attempt to revive the blogger now that summer is underway. I was going to update about my planned trip to see the tennis at Wimbledon but the weather has been awfully rainy and all the rain washed away our plans for khaki shorts, polo shirts, and snacking on strawberries in the sun.

But not all is lost, because I still have quite a few things to write about. Rather than do a big long update on everything that has gone on since my last update, I'm going to get right into regular blogs as if the blogging had never stopped. I think a part of what has prevented me from updating is that it seems like there is just too much to catch up on.

So as summer is here and for the first time in years and years I am living somewhere where I have a garden of my own, I decided to grow some veggies (potted ones albiet) which is something I used to enjoy greatly when I was younger.

In my attempts to relive my childhood agricultural memories I have set out to grow Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Mangetout (Snow Peas), Green Beans, Lettuce and Rocket (Arugula).

The garden is finally starting to produce some good crops (have been snacking on snow peans off the plant, but have enough beans to feed a few so I'm going to boil some up tonight).


Take a look at the biggest cucumber on the vine... its just above pickle size, and is doing really well. I have about 10-15 cucumbers across four plants, which is making me really happy because I had my doubts about growing cukes in pots.



and my tomatoes are just starting to turn into fruits. you can just see a couple of mini little green tomatos on the plant in this photo here.

and a few shots of my lettuce and the snow peas... yum yum!

the only thing that has stood in my way of my farming has been the presence of the british snail (a gardener's nightmare)... they are everywhere and love to eat young plants. At this point my plants are big enough to survive without them, but there was a time where my little babies were near-decimated in the garden. I think that all my neighbours have sprays and upkeep their garden enough to keep them out, so that our garden turns into some kind of horrible snail refuge where they all run to, (one afternoon I counted 87 snails in the yard).

And so I had to resort to various trial and error snail removal methods to keep them away from my plants, which was tricky since most snail pesticides are also harmful to pets (all the neighbours have cats), and so I basically ended up putting rings of salt flakes around the pots to deter them until the vines grew strong enough to resist the feasting of the snails.

here is a photo of my nemeses in action...

i had quite a war waging against these little suckers, and lost a few little plants to them. (3 cucumber vines and four tomato plants to be exact)... but now we are at peace, and they are co-existing happily with my plants in the garden. That is unless they start to feast on my baby cucumbers and tomatoes, in which case the war is back on.

will post more soon,

- C