We are still in the midst of the cloud – we’ve not seen the other side of our road recently and every time we set foot outside, someone above chucks a bucket of water over us. That’s not stopping me though. With David having his head down working on some new designs for a customer, I have been rummaging through the garage and greenhouse gathering up my tools and storing them in my new shed.

It’s a very satisfying activity and one I’ve been looking forward to all week. Now it’s done and when I need a trowel or some secateurs or whatever, I can find one easily – I know where everything is!

I’ve also finally got round to planting up the wallflowers that I bought in the autumn. Surely they are among the nicest of garden plants, popping up with their colour and heavenly scent just when you’re about to give up hope on spring. I love them. Unusually for me (and indeed saving the day for me) I bought small plants in seed trays rather than bare rooted ones and so I am lucky they’re still alive – if I’d gone down my usual route I’d be throwing the dead twigs on the compost heap now. I love being in the garden at this time of year - I always think there is so much promise to come - the bluebells and daffs are pushing their way out of the soil and the cycle is starting. Blooming marvellous!

There is a little cache of goodies (shrubs and trees) tucked away in pots around the side of the house that I’ve been buying up at half price from the Duchy nursery – I know I’ve said it before but that place is an exceptional nursery – a real sweet factory for gardeners. Every time we go in there, I head on up to ‘sorry corner’ and see what’s been marked down because it’s pot bound or otherwise looking sorry for itself – I’ve got myself some great bargains, including a lovely coral bark acer, an Indian bean tree and a magnolia – all marked down to half their normal selling price because they look a bit tatty.

Over the next few weeks, I have to concentrate my efforts on getting my veggie patch sorted because my heart will break if I can’t get crops planted this spring – especially after the undoubted triumph of last year – pretty it wasn’t but productive it certainly was. I am thrilled to bits to have pulled up another celeriac today for tonight’s supper – there is nothing like home grown. At the moment, the veggie patch is little more than a muddy patch of mostly bare earth, which has had weed control over it since I started to dig up my crops. The beds need edging, and it needs fencing before I can really get a proper growth out of it – at the moment, everything I plant is vulnerable to rabbits and hens!

The tree that eagle-eyed Erica spotted being pushed over when we demolished the shed is now laying across the lawn (don’t worry Erica – it’s only a hawthorn – there are plenty more of them in the garden) and I’ve been looking at these lichens growing on all of the branches. Cornwall is full of this sort of thing. I’m afraid I don’t know the names of the types in the photo but they are very common around here and hang down tree trunks like little grass skirts. Apparently lichens only grow in clean air – they don’t like pollution….so there you go, proof, if we needed it, that we live in a clean environment!

Last year, I was photographing Sarah's heart!