My mid life crisis hit me full force in July when I went on an outward bound work event. Suddenly it hit me:- too fat, unfit and stagnating in my life. Hubby had been warning me for some time that Facebook was not a hobby, but suddenly it hit home. At some point in the future I will share with you the story of that weekend but for now let's just say it was a life changing experience! The signs of the crisis:-
Gardening
Health
Appearance
Cooking
These will be addressed regularly on the blog as will my family of Hubby, 3 cats and general life.
So lets get to it!!! At the start of the blog I will attempt to post every couple of days so will do a topic at a time, the first will be my new hobby of Gardening.
Gardening
My once beautifully laid out garden full of ornamental shrubs and spring bulbs has under gone a transformation. I decided now was the time to get a proper hobby and mine would be gardening. Not one to take things lightly I tackled this with utmost enthusiasm, this all took place on a weekend in mid-July.
A herb garden was created :-
This consisted of a garden center bought chili, rosemary, sage and lemon thyme and a supermarket bought "growing herb" mint, flat leaf parsley and curly parsley all of which are shown on the photo above.
I located the herbs on the patio relatively near the back door as the intention was to use the herbs in my cooking which was to be my second hobby.
Next to be tackled was the mid level of the garden. This was transformed from a graveled space to a veg patch.
Hubby was very co-operative (although completely skeptical that this was not a one weekend wonder) and dug out all of gravel and cemented in some stepping stones. The stepping stones were necessary due to my clumsy nature (which will no doubt feature in a future blog) What you see above is from front to back, first on the left and then the right :- spring onions, rocket*, crispy lettuce, normal onions, dwarf broad beans*, grape vine, rhubarb, strawberries**.
* - grown from seed
** - 6 plants bought from Aldi by Mum in spring and managing to survive until Mid July in pots
All others were bought from Planters Garden Center
The plants were all planted in Homebase/B&Q multi purpose compost. Mine is not an organic garden so slug pellets are used although due to the cats not in great quantities. All the plants were fed with a water based feed on planting.
And Finally.......
Potatoes planted in multi purpose compost. I got the tubers from Planters Garden Center and planted three in each bag.
Phew I hear you say, it was a very busy weekend. The strawberries had managed to grow 6 runners each with 3 plants on each runner so from 6 plants all of which had to be rooted and planted. I looked like I had ridden a horse by the time I got up on the Monday morning, muscles not used in decades were telling me they weren't happy about the new hobby but there was a real sense of achievement.
So that was the start of my new hobby, much has happened in the interveening 2 months and I will update you over the next few weeks.
Thanks for reading, the next installment will deal with diet and appearance.
Katie xx
