Gardening joys

London has set itself the challenge of 2,012 communal vegetable gardens in time for the 2012 Olympics. Vancouver took the lead, aiming for 2.010 vegetable gardens in the community by the 2010 winter games. One of the exciting things about the London project is the amount of roof projects planned. London has 1.6 million square metres of suitable roofing. That could be a huge transformation of what the place looks like, have a dramatic effect on pollution and funnily enough the folks taking the lead on this reckon that by getting folks involved you can change their eating habits.

I came home from dropping the little girl at a dance class to find my two boys on the garage roof. They were not embarking on a roof project, just having fun hanging out together and the wee-est was most proud of himself.

We leave for the US on Thursday and have a lot to achieve in both our gardens before this. The good news is that we are harvesting loads of strawberries and raspberries. Most of our other stuff will be ready while we are away so friends and family help yourself! We are planning to haul our pots over to Doug and Susan's and the parents while we are gone. Mike was seriously talking about a short hire of a truck so many and large are the pots. He really misses his pick up truck! I figure we can just use both our cars and ram them in!

We have to confess to being beaten up pretty bad by the little creatures in this world; slugs, snails and caterpillars. Maybe I will spend some of my US time investigating all the different solutions and next year we will be ready with a whole pile of ammo.

Yesterday our little girl came yelling into the house...

"Mum, Dad, Mum, Dad, baby birds have been born in our garden. Come see. Come see. Come see!"

I was immediately thinking about our two wee ones messing with baby birds. I am not much clued up on the birthing time for birds. Mike quickly went out to investigate with me observing from the kitchen door. Our kids had discovered all the egg shells I had put on the ground around the broccoli, a tip from the Bethster. Mike explained very carefully to the kids what had happened while I fell around laughing in the kitchen. I totally understand why the egg shells might just work. Those shells are sharp. Guess I may be keeping all our egg shells from now on!