I may be ugly, I may be warty, but you know there’s a prince inside this gruesome exterior! You know you want to try, don’t you. You know you want to believe it.

I dug up this little fella this afternoon in the greenhouse. He’d buried himself in the soil and was just minding his own business when all of a sudden some mad old bat sticks a fork in the soil and hoiks him out.

After a week away, I get to spend some time doing ‘my own stuff’ today, so I’ve mixed some photography with some gardening and was thrilled to bits when DM came out this evening to say ‘the garden looks wonderful’. He’s right, it does too – that veggie patch looks as good as I could have possibly hoped for at this stage of its short life.

The greenhouse is brimful of plants, both ones that will go into the veggie plot – sweetcorn, two types of squash and courgettes, and ones that will populate the greenhouse for the rest of the summer – two types of tomatoes, five types of chilli, two sweet peppers and basil. The lawns are mown, the bluebells are replacing the primroses for colour, the camellias are still going strong, the new roses are shooting and the perennials that I planted last autumn are also all doing their stuff. We are making a difference and we are ‘leaving our mark’ on this place at last. If only the same could be said for indoors……

In few minutes, I will be keeping my promise to my boy – he’s going to get his walk in the full glory of the Cornish evening light. We’re off across the moor for some r&r together – the four of us and the open space.

Probably a few minutes later, I’ll be asleep on the sofa and will need prodding to get me up to go to bed. This fresh air is good!

My prince took this little chap and put him down somewhere where he wouldn’t get speared by my fork, I didn’t need to kiss the little ‘un to find him, he was there already.

Last year, my 'animal of choice' was a friend pig.