September is here

And what have I got to show for my gardening year? Well, to be honest, it's been a bit of an odd year.

I've had plenty of beans (runners and French), courgettes, salad stuff, some carrots, loads of potatoes, have parsnips in the ground waiting for the first frosts to sweeten them, tons more spuds up at the lottie waiting for me to go dig them up, some huge pumpkins (well, reasonable sized ones anyhow) white ones and yellow ones and ones that look like cottage loaves, and spaghetti squash, and I thnk that I've got some butternuts, but I'm not sure if they set too late in the season to ripen properly, so I think I'll be making soup out of those. Tomatoes have been a funny year, but then I' haven't been pinching out the shoots properly, so they've put on too much leaf, but there are plenty of toms now, just need more sun to ripen them. Had some lovely sweetcorn - must grow much more next year.

Aye, and there's the rub - must do a great deal more of everything next year. Which includes actual gardening. We have spent an inordinate amount of time away this summer - virtually every weekend has been spent doing Land Rover things or out and about. My allotment is a disgrace (both plots). In fact, I haven't quite cultivated half of each plot, which is a terrible, terrible thing to admit. Nettle and fat hen are rife, and I must go do smething about the weeds before the winter sets in.

I've missed five months worth of garden blogging, because I haven't done a huge amount of gardening. Ok, so we've been mainly self sufficient in vegetables for the past couple of months, which I guess isn't too bad, but I could have done so much, much more. :( We moved the greenhouse, which is good, but only put the roof and the back wall back in, which is bad. There are sheets of glass stacked up round the garden, which is truly shameful. I've got chillis and peppers and aubergines in there which are now starting to feel the cold so I must get that glass back in before the end of next week.

The thing that has really spurred me to blog (at last) is the arrival of the first seed catalogue of the season on my doormat. (Actually, it landed on the dog - we don't have a door mat, we don't even use the front door, so the dog's bed is right underneath the mailslot). As usual, I pounced on it with my normal enthusiasm for all things seed-like, and was very restrained in not opening it until I had the kids in bed and I had a quite five minutes with cup of tea to hand.

Halfway through drooling over all the different varieties and vegetables and things I could grow next year, I suddenly realised all the things I hadn't grown this year that I could have done. and it made me feel just a little sad. I missed the sowing date for purple sprouting broccoli (I have three packets of seed) I missed sowing the asparagus seed I bought in Croatia. I sowed summer cabbage and cauliflowers and then went on holiday and forgot to put the seed trays in the greenhouse so my neighbour would water them. So many missed opportunities and dead seedlings. I have dozens of bean varieties, but only grew about 6. i feel I've let myself down. Half of June I was out of action with a knackered back. Then I went to Kessingland. Then we went to Billing a week after I got back. then we were here, then there, then another spell of back-back-itis, then James had a spell of needing to be somewhere most evenings, so my normal time for snatching an hour at the lottie disappeared.

And now it's bloody September. Damn.