Have you ever wondered about the strange synchronicity of ideas, fashions and fad, which you think you’ve just invented and then discover the whole world is on the same track at the same time, or in my case, about five years earlier usually! So yes, I know I’m five years late starting to blog about the universe and growing things, about cosmic forces and getting a better cucumber crop. Like tapestry work and reading Booker Prize shortlist novels, such things usually only enter my head when I’m knocked off the trolley with an illness, – not very often in other words, but now I have a throat which feels like a nettlepatch full of rocks and have retreated to bed with the company of my new laptop, on antibiotics. me that is, not the lap top.

I’ve called this blog my garden, and I’ve even invested in a domain name, because I want to lead as many of my friends who care to follow up the garden path, into those strange and quirkylittle places where good ideas can flourish and connections between people whom I approve of can grow and be transmitted.

I was thinking about this in connection with sweetpea seeds,  which I normally plant out in toilet roll tubes in November but last year they all went on far too fast and then died a nasty death in my back study in January. So I am about to plant another batch- but the price!  I think I will try to save a heap of sweetpea seeds next summer, but are they hybrids who can’t reproduce?  How awful for them if so.  I must try to find out.

Monty Don writes a lot about sweetpeas sowing in his weird and wonderful collection of diaries I bought myself (sorry Monty) on discount as a birthday present. Pip, my collie, can’t reproduce because he was neutered at 6months and as a result, has a very unusual high pitched high tenor bark.  His vocal chords come up with the most amazing array of noises, and this morning he said a very definite “Hello!” in reply to mine. Pip will appear quite often in this blog so I’ll try to upload some pictures to introduce him. Pip has a big personality but doesn’t yet have his own facebook page, unlike Lucy Garnett, my son’s little springer. She likes new friends so you could go there and see her having a rather hilarious swim off the Welsh coast. Definitely uplifting.

I think that’s enough for now.  I’ll work out how to publish this and then get it out to you all. a bit of fun, but you will soon find out that I am deadly serious about a lot of things, so call back later for fanatical outbursts.

bye, Susanne