The veg plot looks like a veg plot today.

The salad bed is overflowing with goodness, the brassicas appear to be flourishing under their bridal veil and the potatoes are hinting at underground promise.

The Everything Else plot isn't big enough. There were originally two Everything Else plots in the plan but I randomly decided to grow tatties and figured I'd figure everything else out later. For now, the EE bed is full - although it doesn't look it yet as some seedlings are tiny and some seeds only went in today.

I was going to plant more peas but I read they don't like onions and the onions needed a space. Cucumbers are friendly with everyone so I popped them in next to the onions and added a sneaky row of radishes because the peas do like them.

I didn't know that sunflowers and potatoes don't make good bedfellows but it's too late to fix it since, for now, both seem to be growing well and I don't have the heart to pull up sunflowers.

So far cats and snails have not induced blue words...

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Peas Don’t Like Onions… originally appeared on Taexalia on June 16, 2010.

When I built the little plastic covered, portable greenhouse thingy she laughed and said "that won't work."

When most of the seedlings failed she said "I told you so."

When I planted the surviving seedlings in a newly cleared patch of earth, she said "I don't think you can grow things there without conditioning the soil."

When I told her this plant was a cucumber, she said "it needs to be in a greenhouse."

When I told her it's an outdoor variety, she said "don't believe all you read on a seed packet."

When I showed her how the fruit has flourished, she said "I don't think cucumbers are supposed to grow that big."

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You Can’t… originally appeared on Taexalia on October 5, 2009.

On the one hand I feel overwhelmed by pandemic obsession with averting mortality...

The latest during the ad break in a film where the advertising bombarded me with a bunch of negativity and told me what I should be doing so that I won't grow old looking. That gem was followed by a proclamation that women could beat nature. I think it was a single use throw-away sanitary product.

I suppose if you look at it a bit squinty you could agree that women could beat nature with their repeated use of a product that clogs landfills, pollutes rivers and may or may not subject their very intimate skin to harsh and poisonous chemicals. Beat nature into ill-health, I mean.

Let us deny mortality, deny our womanhood and deny our environment a breathing space - meanwhile a corporation or two reels in the money as we succumb to the idea that we can save ourselves by shopping and consuming and producing waste.

Hmm.

Then other times I feel like I am being bombarded with mortality and I find myself wanting to resist that life is so. I want to find a way to stop the little deaths, to control something that is much bigger than me. I wince and maybe I utter a word or two and owe a penny or a pound to the imaginary swear box. I feel a little anguish as I contemplate a failure...

My garden grows no matter whether I decide what will grow in a space, or leave it to the weed realm. My garden wanes whether I tend it well or leave it to the elements. Somewhere in there is a balance that I am constantly seeking and may never find.

When the snails came by the hundred, I took out their favourite shrubby home. Now they come in ones and twos from places I'll never know and they eat my Million Bells and Pansies - little cheerful flowers that I planted as a statement of making the garden ours. The snails don 't care about statements and human territory, they like to eat and they like to eat succulent and tended plants rather than scrawny weed seedlings.

And yet when I spotted a snail crawling out in the heat and blistering sunshine, I felt a pang of worry that it might get sunburn.

When the Goldfinches appeared with their fluffy young, I put out "Nyger Seed" knowing it was their favourite delicacy. I watched in glee as the colourful little birds ate from the feeder and delicately fed their young. I smiled when the birds would congregate on the phone wires above me and chatter at me trying to make me skedaddle so they could eat in peace.

Yet the Goldfinches are untidy eaters and they spread the tiny seeds across the garden. I wonder how much actually gets eaten, and I smirk at the pretty name for the seeds which belies the fact I am now weeding hundreds of tiny thistle seedlings from my veg patch.

Someone suggests I do something about the cats who eat some of the little birds, but I don't own any cats and even if I did - who ever knew how to control a cat? The cats are welcome, I think, and it isn't like they use my garden as a toilet.

Cats are mystical, tuned in, deviant creatures - for almost as soon as I have uttered the claim, the little tell-tale piles start appearing in my plots. A tidy row of radish seedlings is the first victim and some of the plants are found limp amongst the uneven soiled soil.

I sigh and then a feline wanders into reach and it is pointless to speculate on the identity of the radish wrecking cat, or even to blame the cat for simply being a cat. I tickle him behind the ears and along his belly in just the way he likes, and I ponder cat defences that will save our dinners without banishing cats (who do scare away brassica eating pigeons) entirely.

Win some, lose some and let go of that which I can't change... or get creative about how I might balance things a little more in my favour next time...

The cycle turns and somewhere another seed begins to germinate...

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Life Death Rebirth originally appeared on Taexalia on July 1, 2009.

I am not going to post a photo of a snail. You all know what snails looks like, especially if you own a garden and you care for it. Also - there are so many contenders for the position of snail model that I just cannot choose.

Things I have learned about snails...

1. They are actually quite fast.
2. They will not, ever, eat the plants and debris that you really wouldn't mind them eating. Instead of chomping merrily through the weed seedlings or attacking the ornamental pine things, they prefer to obliterate baby lettuce and wildflower seedlings in the blink of an eye.
3. They won't even eat the vegetation in the council garden waste bin when they have been flung in there attached to pruned bits of ornamental pine things, instead they zoom up the inside of the bin and hang around in gangs gathering numbers in an attempt to actually push open the bin lid and return to snail hotel.
4. Snails like to spend the day hiding in cool, shady damp spots. Most of all they are quite partial to ground hugging, evergreen, shrubs. Which is, in a snailshell, exactly what my garden is. Snail hotel.
5. They sleep in the shrubs, but they don't appear to eat them since they have been wholly unhelpful in the process of removing said shrubbery.
6. Apparently Blackbirds and Crows eat snails - but the Blackbirds and Crows who visit my garden seem to prefer the seeds and suet treats around the bird feeder. I can't say I blame them.
7. Attempting to counteract the massive resident snail population and its destructive habits without resorting to chemical warfare or killing them myself takes my mind on strange journeys. Like superglueing their shells to a stick and dangling them from the bird feeder.
8. These thoughts inspire a wash of guilt to run through me and a need to almost run out to the garden and carrying all the snails to the salad planter.
9. Almost.
10. Having inherited a garden almost entirely composed of random ornamental evergreen shrub things, I face the reality that growing vegetables is going to be nigh on impossible - especially if I can't or won't kill a single snail.

So I am now less precious about ripping out living plant life and creating a garden that suits us, and that is also less snail friendly. It's taking me a long time to do and I may not actually grow a vegetable in a plot until next year, but I am getting there.

Except that snails are not the only problem. Rocks, stones and gravel are also hampering my journey to veggie self-sufficiency. The boulders that I have dug out of the ground would sink an armada. And don't even get me started on the chuckies. Chuckies, by the way, appears to be a North East term... down here they call it salmon pink decorative gravel.

Pfffft.

Of course if you love salmon pink decorative gravel, please do drop by and cart some of it away. For free. Seriously. I think the previous owner hired a helicopter and just dumped several tons of it everywhere.

This is a view of the garden as it was when we moved in. Bark chippings, ornamental pine things a-plenty and two different colours of chuckies. Everywhere. You can see behind the ornamental pine thing there is a decorative raised bed. Of chuckies.

The rotten old shed was replaced with a spiffing new one. We love it. Well I quite like it and I am becoming familiar with the psychology of men and sheds. @ doesn't even garden, but he covets the shed. Even our neighbour, also a man, covets the shed. Apparently it really is a man thing.

You can see some ornamental pine things and ornamental evergreen things have gone. You can see a pile of boulders growing. You can empathise with the blood sweat and tears that exuded from my body, not to mention a little bit of sailor talk.

As of today the raised chuckie bed has been dug into sacks, the green ground shrub bed thing interspered with ivy has been hacked a bit. We do not know the name of the shrub but it has become known as The Green Shrub You Can See From Space. I kid you not - this bizarre piece of gardening is the singular thing that enabled us to nosey at the property using Google Earth before we even came to view the place.

It may take a flame thrower, but that rectangle of snail heaven (so far the count is twenty and I have only trimmed one edge) is coming out. It is the singular piece of growth that has tempted me towards asking the neighbours for a bit of weed killer.

A thing I cannot do.

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A Snail’s Pace originally appeared on Taexalia on June 15, 2009.

I found this little bundle of potential whilst I was digging out a small corner of the garden. I found two, but this is the one I took the photo of before I tucked it carefully back into the earth. It's the chrysalis of what will be and Angle Shades Moth.

This makes me sound knowledgeable and interesting but when I unearthed it I had no idea what I was looking at, other than a guess that it was something to do with Moths. Thanks to the UK Moths site, I will now be able to sound knowledgeable and interesting next time. I don't think I've ever seen one of these moths before so I'm going to keep an eye out for them emerging from the ground later - the caterpillars feed on shrubs and I've inherited plenty of those.

I did start out with the goal of finishing digging over the veg plot, but it seems that there is a geological fault line running right down the middle of the square piece of ground that I'm expecting to feed us. It is hard work digging soil, it is harder work when the job morphs into quarrying huge rocks. I gave up after getting two more trenches done as I was feeling a bit frustrated with the whole thing.

I got snippy with the shears and trimmed the wee flowering hedge that curiously bisects the back half of the plot, as it was still carrying last years withered old flower heads. It's a pretty hedge but it is ear-marked for relocation later in the year. Although I have absolutely no idea how to re-locate a hedge.  I also tried to tame the tall privet hedge at the back of the plot to the consternation of a red-tailed bee. Let's just say I'm no hairdresser and I'm liking that the advice I'm finding on creating a wildlife friendly garden is to be an untidy gardener.

I have also discovered why heather covers such a large area of the Scottish landscape. It is rooty and stubborn. I cut back a couple of bushes the other day because they had gone a bit mental and looked nothing like their neighbours who are shaping up to give some pretty displays later in the year. Today I was digging out the roots to clear the little corner for planting and it was not the easiest thing I have ever done.

That's when I came upon the little lady up top.

That (very small) patch of ground is now ready for planting something which is wonderful because I just want to get something planted in the ground to feel like I have achieved something other than sorting boulders from earth...

Still no composter yet, but I have now decided where I am going to put it when it arrives - and I have lots of things to put in it already!

Oh and while I was fighting with the heather roots I was visited by a robin at the feeder three feet away - bold as brass I got @ to bring the tub of mealworms and once I topped it up went back to digging. The starlings - bigger birds with sharper beaks - would not come near and instead stood on the roof shouting at me to go away. Fearties.

We had some Goldfinches earlier in the day - beautiful little birds that weren't part of the circle at the old place but are more than welcome here.

I am feeling daunted by the prospect of turning that piece of ground into a thriving veg plot.

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Mother Nature’s Secrets originally appeared on Taexalia on April 27, 2009.

I have discovered that owning land, no matter how small a plot of land it is, is not as simple as just signing the missives (how is that for a bit of link love?), stabbing a flag pole bird feeder into the earth and staking one's claim. I have also discovered that when you view a property, the perception you walk away with can be somewhat different from reality.

For instance, @ was positive that we had a cupboard under the stairs as well as in the kitchen. He was planning ways to turn this cupboard under the stairs into a fabulous cloakroom with hooks and shelves and a little light. I was unable to recall the cupboard under the stairs in the hall but couldn't totally refute his thinking because my memory of the hall had a big fuzzy blank spot on that particular wall.

It turns out that there is only a cupboard under the stairs in the kitchen for us to try not to use as a throw-it-in-there-just-for-today cupboard.

Another warped perception I had was my memory of the garden. When we arrived here on moving day I was somewhat stunned by the sheer size of the plot. My memory only accounted for around two thirds of what we actually have. To put it another way, I had gone home and decided we wouldn't have room for a greenhouse or a bigger shed - when in fact the new shed is ordered (and bigger) and the greenhouse is back on the wish list.

Our garden really isn't the largest garden in the world, but for now I'm rather glad we didn't go the route of a croft in the highlands because the thought of organising, taming and weeding something that size now terrifies me.

I did some weeding last week. There's plenty more to do. And because I am concentrating on the back garden, the front garden is starting to edge towards one of those gardens where the weeds are dusty and children tell stories about the wicked old witch who lives there. Thankfully I don't have a pair of grey net curtains to complete the look.

The thing is I don't have a plan for the front garden, I don't even have a plan for the back garden, and basically I have no idea what I am doing. This is sort of a self put-down... I have a little knowledge and I can read the back of a seed packet... or I can follow a great blog about growing vegetables but sometimes I stand in the earth with a sweaty brow and survey the large space around the small space I have decided to concentrate on and I get a little anxious.

I've managed to get over the emotional rollercoaster of plucking weeds - weeds are green things that I can't identify that are growing where I don't want them to be, but they aren't bad people really. I'm conflicted about the daisies though - I just don't want to mow them down in the middle of their blooming glory.

So far all the wisdom I've read suggests digging over the plot in November, but we didn't have the plot in November... but I am digging it over anayway and I have to say I am not someone who is going to get it all done in one day, or even seven... but I'm itching to get some plants in there and see what comes of the experiment.

I am having conniptions about the amount of chuckies the previous owner decided to spray everywhere tho. They are impossible to remove once they have been trampled into perfectly good soil

Things I am anticipating the arrival of:

• Compost bin
• Green cone
• New shed
• Energy to finish the digging

Things on my wish list:

• Greenhouse
• Groovy fire pit/table thing I spotted
• Gooseberry bushes
• Hammock
• Hedgepigs
• Foxes
• Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

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My Kingdom For A Fork originally appeared on Taexalia on April 25, 2009.

Taexalia's Magic Beans

Crunching and bean counting being big news just now, I have decided to join in - and today the great bean sprouting experiment got under way. I have found a lot of advice out there but no singular method, and so this should prove interesting as I am still clueless...

First I soaked my teeny tiny little beans in filtered water for eight hours...

Alfalfa beans having a bath

My tiny alfalfa beans didn't really do anything, no matter how often I sneaked through to the kitchen to check on their progress and I have decided that eight hours is a very long time. Whilst I was staring at the jar hoping to see the first signs of life, I marvelled at how self sufficient we are going to be in around five days when we have our first crop. I suppose starting small is a good idea, and our only option until we move to our new and, as yet, undiscovered garden. I can only imagine how impatient I'm going to be when I sow a vegetable seed and have to wait several months for an end product...

Alfalfa beans stare back motionless

Finally the eight hour decade was up and I poured the beans into the top tray of the bean sprouter and let the water drain off. I am supposed to check for any bad beans but I don't know what a bad bean looks like and they were all sitting quietly so I let them be. I was overjoyed to see they have swollen a bit!

Something magical may be happening but I can't see what it is

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Every Bean Counts originally appeared on Taexalia on November 25, 2008.