The list

The first of the season, scribbled on a Post-It at work last week. Miraculously, despite the frantic pace of everything else in life just now (children taking part in music festival, plus 3 weeks of school orchestral, chamber and choral concerts to mention only a few pieces of our jigsaw), I've done everything on the list. It feels good to have started the season with a small success, although I've had to cut down on blogging and visiting other sites. I'm eager to catch up with what everyone's been up to.

To explain the list: the box for chitting is a sturdy wooden tomato box which I use for chitting seed potatoes. During most of the year I store it in the allotment shed, but it's now cluttering up the dining room with the first phase of the potatoes: Charlotte salad potatoes.

The 'fleece to allotment' was a new fleece tunnel I'd ordered, which sat in its box in the hallway (already taken up with the Ikea 'Billy' bookshelves which are waiting for chain reaction too complex to go into here). I've now re-located it to the allotment shed. Billy is still in the hall.

In the autumn I ordered garlic. I was too late to get the winter planting variety, so I settled for the soft-necked spring type. It arrived way before Christmas, and in the meantime has been rotting gently in our garage. I've now re-ordered, and intend to bung it in as soon as it arrives. It's already late for getting it in the ground.

Broccoli - well, I was seduced by Delfland Nurseries' purple sprouting broccoli programme - two organic plants of each of four varieties. Delivered in July, this will take the stress out of my limited windowsill space for raising seedlings.

Time for action again: husband and son have just arrived back from collecting water samples for son's Advanced Higher Chemistry investigation, and I've made a romantic date with my DH to turn the compost bins at the allotment - if it isn't too windy. March is roaring like a lion today, with a blizzard of quickly melting spring snow this morning.