The trouble with early Easter breaks is the tendency of the British weather to thwart any and all gardening plans. You wouldn’t believe how much work I had scheduled for this extended weekend, I was going to turn my plot into a prize winning specimen based on this weekends labour alone. Instead I’ve been forced back to flat to do constructive yet boring work like painting the walls. Not good at all, fortunately, Bean Sprouts informs me that it will be 150 years before we get another Easter quite this early again.

The past few weekends have been washouts but I’ve managed to catch the odd hour or so between showers to do a little pottering. I got a few more rows of spuds in yesterday and I now have 6 rows planted and enough left chitting for another 6. Trouble is I don’t have the land for another 6, at least not if I intend to harvest anything other than spuds. I think I may put the rest of my Kerrs Pink up for adoption, I don’t even like floury spuds so it seems a shame to let them take up all my courgette space.

Spring was welcomed in by the first flowering of my water lily. Quite an odd flower but attractive to a forgiving eye.

I was bemoaning the sparsity of frogs in my pond to a yocal, only to be informed that she had never seen a frog in all her years on the site and in fact hadn’t seen one within a 5 mile radius. This does not bode well for an accidental squatter turning up and making himself at home while gorging on the slugs that I’ve been nurturing. I was directed to Richmond Park with the suggestion to go and kidnap spawn - this is probably a productive job for a wet weekend.

More local chin rubbing advice was received regarding my broad beans. It seems the site secretary is very concerned about my plants and is keeping a close eye on their progress. He tells me that they are flowering and I would like to agree and grin back at him full of pride but I’m warned off by his sharp intake of breath and the look that makes me think a kettle of vultures are circling above my plot. He’s now put it in my head that they will be wiped out by the next frost so I can barely sleep at night, I’m concentrating on sending warm vibes to my patch. It’s too late now to cover them back up with the fleece as they are too big and I have staked them up, so all I can do now is send positive vibes. I’m almost talking to them. If they do manage to fruit I think I will talk to them!