I’ve been on the road today for most of the day – travelling this morning to a meeting with a client, then on home this afternoon. I’ve discovered that even in school holidays, travelling on a Wednesday afternoon is a good time to go! I’d thought that there are no good times to travel at this time of year because every time I set foot on a train or on a motorway at the moment, they’re packed and horrible. Today’s train journey was relative bliss.

In fact, it was so good that I spent the entire journey writing a proposal so no time ‘wasted’ on travelling at all today then – cool!

Getting home is always a complete joy for me. Partly that’s a doggy welcome. R&A, each in their own little way, greet me and then weld themselves to my side for the rest of the day.

One of my greatest thrills about being home is my ‘perimeter’ check – a walk round to see what’s been going on in the garden while I’ve been away. That hen (Sherri) is still often where she shouldn’t be. She’s taken to laying her daily egg under a bush in a rockery, rather than a nest box, specially designed for the purpose – ha! She’s also designed her own little ‘belly dance wriggle’ so she can circumnavigate the mesh screen that’s supposed to prevent her and the other hens from getting into the greenhouse so we’re having to turf her out of there regularly…..she’s such a character.

The hastily assembled veggie plot is, in all honesty, a bit of a disappointment. I’ve had trouble with rabbits eating my onions. Courgettes and squashes that have finally, after being replanted three times because the first ones I put in just keeled over, as did the second and third lot (good job I grew more seed than I needed). This latest lot are in and clearly now past the keeling over stage so we will have some courgettes and squashes in the next couple of days. One of the two varieties of potato I planted has done absolutely fine, the other variety has been weakly growing and sick-looking, although they have cropped, however lightly. The peas might as well not have been planted - they just looked at me and died!

On the plus side, the sweetcorn is coming on a treat, there is now some spinach (though not much), the celeriac and broccoli are doing great (now watch them keel over too!!!!)

There is no doubt though that the star performer is the greenhouse, which looks like a scene from ‘the triffids’, with tomatoes that touch the ceiling and are simply laden with fruit, sweet peppers the size of a (small) fist, flowering aubergine, inch-long chillis and so much basil we don’t know what to do with it.

We’ve been frustrated by the tomatoes ‘lack of desire’ to ripen so I got in there at the weekend and cut off all the leaves from the bottoms of the plants up to about 4 foot in the air so that more light hits the fruit. Now look – a red one…..and there are lots of ‘orange’ ones now too so soon we’ll be feasting on these little beauties every day.

There was champagne on the go last year!