Kieran arrived home today, after his holiday back in Harrogate; so tomorrow will be back to getting on with big projects.

While Nick’s been working on such things as helping Didier, the electrician, tiling the windowsills, ready for when the windows and doors arrive in a couple of weeks, and generally tidying up, I’ve been on gardening duties. We’re eating mange tout, broad beans and strawberries every day now, and the lettuces are nearly ready, so I’ve been busy planting the stuff for summer; spinach, green and yellow French beans, radish and rocket.

I got a bit carried away at the market; there were veg plant stalls everywhere, selling varieties I’d never even heard of, such as blue tomatoes and white aubergines, as well as the bog standard stuff. I came home with the car loaded with little veg plants; tomatoes of every shape and hue, purple and white aubergines, long and round courgettes, yellow peppers, chilli peppers and onions. They’re all planted now, but there’s very little space left for the seedlings in the cloche, grown from seeds we saved last year; 40 or so cherry tomato plants, a similar number of beef tomato plants, red peppers and yet more chillies. I think we might have to dig another “overflow” bed! I hope we get lots of keen gardeners visiting this summer; if I had nothing else to do but garden, I might just about keep up with it……