Sunday shenanigans.

Well today I spent a much longer time then imagined cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom. Over 3 hours later with only breaks for nature, coffee and buying tickets for a club night in the bank holiday weekend - I still haven't finished. However have managed to get Nathan to say he will do the bits I haven't done. Namely the weird smell under the sink and the weird smell in the tank cupboard and the making sense of the food cupboard.

 I now have a number of pots on my kitchen windowsill. I sat in front of the very good but very depressing "The Butterfly Effect", with a tray on my lap potting up all those seed kits I bought from the 99p/£1 shops. I have sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, chilies, basil. chives and curly parsley ready to go. The herb kit had some very weird dehydrated compost discs enclosed with which I was to add water to rehydrate. One blew up to 4 times its size almost immediately but the other two stayed very much disc shaped so I had to wait for them to soften then I got very dirty breaking it all up.

I'm not sure if the others will grow very well, in particular the tomatoes as I've apparently missed the window of opportunity. However, this is advice for when May is usually warmer than it was this year. From what I've read you're not supposed to take anything outside until it is warm enough so maybe my lateness won't matter this year.

Dragged the planters and baskets to a sunnier spot in the garden. I must say they're all looking much more full. They were looking quite pathetic with everything spaced out according to instruction and I was worried the the spacing instructions were for ground planting rather than container planting. You see all these really full and bountiful planters and baskets and I couldn't see how the hell what I had put together was going to take on a similar look when in bloom. (photos below taken at night

But things may work out yet.

The damaged plants are looking perky, scarred of course, but have resurrected themselves and are looking quite strong despite the obvious signs of previous distress (when I tried to push them through the lining.)

Still haven't quite managed the potato planting but the potatoes I'm chitting are well on their way but blimey do the sprouts look scary.

Found some overly chitted (is that the term) potatoes on top of the fridge. Each root was about 4 inches long. From what I can gather they won't do much if I try and plant them. They look like they're about to grow leaves actually. Little purple leaves. Hmmm. Might keep them and see what happens.