Garden news - 2

Reverting to what I was saying yesterday, if the minutest fraction of the money that is being injected into the banks were somehow directed towards encouraging people to make gardens more genuinely productive - instead of turning them over to tarmac and decking - wouldn't life be vastly healthier? Morrisons' "Let's Grow" scheme has the right idea.

Of course, I wouldn't in any way exclude flowers: they do so much for our mental wellbeing. Apologies in advance for some more horticultural hubris: you expect geraniums to stick around for a long season, but I've never had such luck before with sweet peas. It was nearly four months ago that I reported that ours were flowering - and they are still. You see a lot of extremely realistic artificial flowers around these days, including sweet peas, but despite their short life, there is nothing to compare with having fresh ones in a vase on the table.

It's been a good year too for raspberries, a few of which seem to be there for the picking each morning. And though we've exhausted the fig tree at last, it's hard to keep up with falling apples.

For anyone without the opportunity to grow their own, there is of course a wide variety of vegetable box schemes, some more organic and local than others. Following a recent post, it was good to hear from my Canadian cousin, Bruce Coates that his son and daughter-in-law Kent and Ruth are heavily committed in this field: one of the ways a blog seems to be able to bring together diverse people with similar ideas.