Gardening Tales- a Little Hint of Spring

  As we drag ourselves through the last few days of January wondering what the Hell just happened to the world, what should occur but a perfect gardening day. Not too cold, but fresh, bright and sunny; and I've had a record 10(ish) hours sleep and, despite a burgeoning cold, felt unusually full of vim and vigour, even after lugging two bags of  shopping home from Waitrose. I brought no school work home with me, determined that, whatever the weather, I was going to get something done on my day off. Today I was going to start on my kitchen garden. Those of you who have followed the reports of my horticultural exploits may have noticed this is Gardening Tales, not Allotment Tales. This is because I have given up the allotment, having come again to the conclusion I drew every year, but never acted upon- which was, it's not worth the effort. Or, to be more accurate, the effort needs more than the time I've got. Commitments are spreading me too thin, so something had to go, and go it did.
   Out I went, then, with what I thought was my old pair of walking boots on, but turned out to be my new pair. But what the Hell- when am I going to get up a mountain, or even a hill, without two strong lads and a couple of huskies to help me?
  So, being of a certain age, where stamina is something I only remember, like John Noakes on Blue Peter, or Noggin the Nog ( for the benefit of any non-British readers, these were children's programmes, not what you're thinking), I had to break the jobs up, with five to ten minutes on each one, then start again. Therefore it was 5 minutes sawing in the apple tree, then drag a bag of compost to the site of the kitchen garden, dig the bed for 5 minutes or so, fill planters, take the cranesfoot

up to the other end of the garden, saw a bit more of the tree, lug a bag of compost over to the bed, etc. After three hours, I had dug two-thirds of the bed, filled two planters and sawn off three limbs (of the apple tree, not me. I mean, that would just be silly, as the best outcome would be that I would fall over, having, at most, just the one leg left).
 So there it is, my new kitchen garden, all ready (well, two-thirds) for planting- when I decide what I'm going to plant there. The rhubarb is already sprouting, which is rather brave of it, given that it's still January and it's been the coldest winter for some time in this neck of the woods. I put the potatoes and the garlic in the big raised bed last week, and put tomatoes, courgettes, butternut squashes, onions, chives, lettuce and other odds and ends into trays and pots that are now on my widow sill. The cherry tomatoes sprouted yesterday.
  A good and timely start then, and something I can tick off my list of things that need to be done. It will be interesting to see if having my "allotment" in my

backyard will result in a better quality and/or greater quantity  of crops this year. It'll take a little bit of experimenting to see what grows well and what doesn't.
 And, finally, sorry- I was talking rubbish; I can't possibly have one leg left if I'd cut off three limbs- I'd need one arm to do the cutting, wouldn't I? Duh! So, I'll see you again when I've got something more interesting than sleeping to talk about. Hope you enjoyed Noggin the Nog!