New year, new post, new ideas

Have just rediscovered the Grapevine gardening forum, and it's kind of given my garden interest a much needed boost. Having spent the past few months happily knitting and chasing children, it's finally the New Year and thoughts turn to outdoor pursuits. Not that I'm going to be able to accomplish much for until the Equinox, but I can start thinking about planning and growing and eating all those lovely veggies.

It must be a cyclical thing, as as the year turns, so my interests move in a logical procession. During the darkest time between Hallowe'en and Yule I hardly venture into the garden, unless it's for parsnips or a brassica or to see to the chickens. The door to the green house is barred with wire to keep the cats out and let the frost in, the allotment is abandoned to it's layers of straw and carpet and manure and I hibernate indoors, knitting and cooking and not really thinking about much other than Nanowrimo and the impending festive season.

Then, as soon as we're into the New Year and the days start to noticeably lengthen, something pokes me in the back of the head and I get the urge to barricade myself in the bathroom with a hot bath and the seed catalogues. About the only place I get to sit and read these days...

I'm not sure what made me look at the Grapevine, but it's spurred me enough to want to take that huge bag of loo rolls we've been saving and fill them full of compost and broad bean seeds, and sow onion seeds in modules and stuff a few stray spuds into big tubs in the unheated lean to.

You can almost hear the sap starting to stir...