Ridgeway Cottage anyhow

    As if there wasn't enough to worry about in the world of food already, with supermarkets filling our heads with the need for special offer junk, sugar in absolutely everything and multi-national companies tampering with whatever takes their fancy, GMO OMG has planted the seed of nightmare killer corn and chemically engineered soya. I thought I was doing my bit by being a vegetarian, growing my own fruit and veg and forcing it on my kids instead of feeding them McDonalds, but "no!", the scientists have been at my seeds. When I first got my allotment there was an enormous parsnip growing happily there that went to seed and I was warned against collecting the seed because my parsnips "wouldn't come true". I nodded wisely, thinking "poppycock" in my head and collected the seed anyway. But what was in this whole "not coming true" business? Should I be scared of my hundreds of seeds that I got for free? Basically a F1 hybrid seed invol...

Today was the first day of the Easter holidays. After a rainy start, the sun shone, the children played, Sherlock sunbathed in the garden and all was fine in the world. As far as the year of the sock is concerned, it's time to try the second green leaf pattern sock, that I made such a mess of in February in between gardening. This afternoon there were some problems with the Internet and it was probably off for a couple of hours but it wasn't the disaster you'd imagine for a couple of kiddies off from school. Charlie did come out to tell me it wasn't working and that Josie was making her own real life Cluedo but I was in the middle of planting out peas so didn't really take too much notice. Next thing I knew, Josie was outside, giving me directions as the murderer and instructing that I don't remove the clue from the slug pellets (the murder weapon). There were clues all over the house and several murders that went on for at least a couple of hours. The childre...