Surely May Is The Very Best Month Of The Year...

Haven't put the Very Expensive Fablon on the kitchen shelves yet...Himself was puttering about the electricity bill so I thought it might be much better if I was outside...

I know having pots and containers is supposed to make up for not being able to garden in the actual earth...I do know that...but cleaning out the remains of last year's shrivelled up annuals is quite soul destroying when I used to be sowing long rows of veggies and tying in the sweet peas and runner beans...

And the paint I put on the horrible plastic pots has mostly peeled off...it was special paint intended for plastic plant pots...you'd have thought it would have lasted longer than a year.

Then I began to find the dreaded cut worms...something else on my growing list of creatures which apparently serve no good purpose...dozens of the little sods in every container I tackled...the last straw was as I was digging deep into a container which had held pansies and up comes the trowel with three fat and lethargic green slugs clinging on...purely out of spite, I tossed them into the water-filled ditch.

Father had a Toad...that Toad came with us every time we moved house...he lived under a flower-pot in the greenhouse and ate up all the bugs and other nasties...wonder if he'd have eaten green mottled slugs...

I'd quite like a tortoise...they seem perfectly happy to eat a slug along with a lettuce leaf...don't think you can buy one now though. Mum's ancient tortoise was partial to grapes actually...he'd open his mouth ready for you to pop it in...then he'd squelch it up with a look of utter bliss on his face. My ex-husband used to try to feed him with leaves from the cannabis plants that grew by the compost heap...he thought a tortoise would benefit from a bit of herbal.

The plants grew from the seeds thrown out when the parrot was cleaned out...just in case you were wondering.

Not much head way was made with the various pots and planters I have...a trip to the garden centre would seem to be appropriate...all those pretty colours are so enticing, they practically shout out to be bought...a tray of this and two of those and if you buy two there's one for free...someone asks if this comes back next year and I squint and say it does surely and those colours are wonderful and they agree and push their trolley round to the roses...

Must get a packet of night-scented stock...whatever else is forgotten, that is an essential...

Love, love this time of year...