Smug virtue

Nominally an S post, but more an interruption in the flow of trivia.

I have now visited every blog on the A-Z challenge list.  All that I can visit that is.  Some are inexplicably unavailable.  My Follow list has quadrupled.

Now that I've done my duty in terms of visiting, I can concentrate on reading the back blogs of the many amazing sites out there.  Stop being creative people.  I didn't actually need another excuse to spend time on the internet.

Plants

Another plant and seed catalogue arrived this morning.  Excitment!  We can put in a proper order rather than just optimistically looking at the tangle of dying bindweed and giving up.

We do have a vegetable patch as well as a soft fruit bed.  It's a proper garden, ours.  We are far from properly equipped to look after it, but we do keep trying.  Efforts this year are made much easier by the team of gardeners we employed over the summer to dig out as much as possible in three days.  This extended to four days and wasn't finished, but it does look very much better.

There are two parts to the incentive.  One, we can actually accomplish something without despairing completely and giving up two trowels in.  Two, having spent quite a lot of money on getting the place sorted, it seems a wicked waste just to let it all happen again.  Bindweed, begone!  Dandelions, drop dead!  Creeping Buttercup, crawl away!

Hence our joy at the arrival of the catalogues.  It's a whole world of arcane mystery.  So much choice.  Do we take the long route and grow from seed, even though we have no cold frame or cloches?  Do we cheat a bit and buy starter plants?  Which types of potato will be best for a near to year round supply?  Leaving aside the whole vexed issue of salad v main crop, there are earlies and second earlies.  If we order now, we can get better deals on early onions, shallots and garlic, all of which overwinter well and exist in varieties which do not attract onion blight.

Among other things, looking at the list of stuff available has reminded us of how many vegetables we eat and enjoy.  This is despite years of looking sadly at each other and going "Oh, we must eat more veg."  Turns out we eat quite a few.  And of course will do so in enormous quantities if we end up with the list we're putting together.  It does feel virtuous.

Virtue has its own reward

Managed a bit of painting between the virtuous tasks like recycling cardboard and taking son to piano lesson.  Painting, in this case meaning painting minis.  I'm not good at this as I haven't been doing it for very long, but slowly, slowly I'm building up technique.

There is something deeply satisfying about prodding about with a tiny paintbrush and filling in a belt buckle the size of a pinhead.  Hard to explain, but nonetheless true.

The painting was a reward for actually removing some of the mountainous piles of rubbish from around the house.  I'm a firm believer in carrot and stick, but I'm much better at the carrot end of the equation.  This time though I did a thing I've found impossible in the past and actually took some books down to the charity shop.  They were all duplicates, so it wasn't too bad, but it was still a real wrench and felt like such a huge betrayal.  I apologised to them all the way there.  Still feeling a bit guilty.