It was an indulgence but I did it anyway- bought an entire allotment’s worth of seeds from Brown’s for £20, at half price it promises a year’s worth of food, filling the average allotment with wonderful plants.  I know I have some duplicates, but watch this space. The large packet is fat with promise, but it presents an even larger than usual challenge to my chronic carelessness with labelling. That should be partially solved by my father sending me printed out strip labels made with his little gadget. He’s already done it for twenty flower seed packets. Now all I have to do is to copy out 100 or more vegetable names onto an email!

The shallots and onions I planted a few days ago have already rooted. Yesterday I raked the plot to what they call a fine tilth, and have prepared the ground to receive them. We had such severe winds last Thursday that I came home to discover my plastic sheeting had been torn off and flung over the back fence.

The world is watching Japan , aghast at the scale of the disaster from the earthquake and tsunami. Little cameos of individual stories and grief reduce it to a manageable thing to absorb.  Not a happening to even try to explain away. We live on a strangely unstable and volatile planet.  Nuclear disaster seems to be the next not unlikely development. The Japanese seem so meticulous and tidy , – poor poor people faced with such filth and brokenness.

One cannot help but think of the Hardy poem, “At the breaking of nations.”  In the face of disaster all I do is to carry on harrowing clods.