Apologies for yesterday's technical problems - we were off-line for 24 hours due to 'operator error' on our broadband - DM forgot a vital bit of kit so we'd lost our signal!!!! It is, though, now fully loaded!

We’ve taken my folks on a tour of Heligan today. I love the story of this place and wish upon wish I could manage my veggie plot like they do. As I seem to constantly be when I look at other veggie gardens, I was both green with envy and ashamed of my poor old stuff fighting it out against the odds of ground elder, nettles, other weeds and the rubbish that’s now so entwined with the weeds that I want to weep every time I go in there.

I was cheered by seeing their broccoli, which was small compared to mine……I crowed and made a big thing of it then when I got home, I realised mine have been turned to lace and they are coated in caterpillars…..so that’s the downside of seeing butterflies all over the buddleia then! I suppose they do say that pride comes before a fall and that certainly happened to me today.

No amount of misery over my veggies could dampen what has been a fabulous day though. We’ve been to parts of the garden I’ve not seen before, as well as explored round most of my favourite bits.

One of the best parts of the garden is the veggie garden, without any doubt for me. I love to see what they’ve got and how they’ve got it working. These clay rhubarb pots are the very essence of the gardens – things that are beautiful and functional, bringing earlier, sweeter crops to the estate. Seeing them all standing to attention in the sunshine is a fabulous sight.

Last year, I was satisfying my craving for Gothic!