Ahem...anyone seen Spring lately...?

I don't know if any other UK residents have been waking up in a foul mood over the last few weeks of dogged winter that just won't end, despite the clocks going forward and the coming and going of Easter weekend (which normally heralds our first BBQ of the year...) but I am FED UP. Stupid bloody sodding English weather. I mean, what does a poor immigrant girl have to do to get some warmth around here?! I can get by without the sun, so long as I persist with the cod liver oil supplements and the Vitamin D they provide, but seriously?

Today, I decided to hell with it and dug over the flower bed at the end of our scruffy little garden (which is going to be overhauled quite spectacularly this year, money and time allowing) while my hubby built our composter and the kids played in the snow. Yep, snow. On the third of bloody April, it was snowing all day with a wind gusting enough to bring the temperature down that much further. I've never been wrapped up so warm to dig over a flower bed in all my life, and only ever wrapped the kids up this much for sledging. The snow wasn't enough to settle, just enough to stick a finger up in our face and say, "Freeze, suckers!"

Yes I took it from inside...freshly dug over bed at the back left and newly made composter  at the back right (excuse the  bags, bin-day tomorrow...)

So...my beautiful Bee-friendly meadow flower bed will have to wait to be sown a few more days (weeks?) as will the amazing work of the Friends of the Earth organisation, who provided me with the seeds last summer when we were out walking in a local park. As it goes, Friends of the Earth are so big on saving British bees (of which 20 species are now extinct, according to the newsletter I received today) that if you go to their website, you too can get a Bee Saver pack for a donation, something I advocate whole-heartedly!

I digress... So I've been dying to start planting and get my garden started so we can actually make a concerted effort to grow some of our own this year. I've got two trays of 24 cells with various seeds starting to germinate on the window sill, and with the bit of sun yesterday we went out to our local garden centre and got a few tomato and pepper plants as well as some parsley, rosemary and chives. I am determined that now we are eating predominantly vegetables with a generous amount of meat, the kids should be involved as much as humanly possible and that we are to eat as fresh and wholesome as our tiny garden will allow.

Beetroots have germinated and growing well, and several others along with courgettes and pumpkin  have germinated. 

We won't be able to grow much, but I'm hoping for some of our favourites (and more expensive to buy, especially in organic form) such as peppers, courgettes, gem squash - a South African favourite of mine - tomatoes and such as well as staples that we love like broccoli, carrots, potatoes and salad greens. And if I'm really lucky, my organic lemon seeds that I saved from last year will germinate and my long lasting dream of having a lemon tree will come true. My grandmother had a little lemon tree in the patio area and I remember how much I loved just smelling the fruits and bruising and sniffing the leaves, often stuffing them in my pockets to carry around. She also had a veritable grove of fruit trees including peach, plum, apricot, apple and several grape varieties. The wine-lover in me really wishes I had that big a grape selection at my fingertips now...

So far only the radishes are growing, but the gemsquash seeds have germinated (just on the right of the radish seedlings!)

In addition to what we hope to get planted, we have our pretty little elderberry tree that since the removal of the huge conifer (still can't believe how big a tree this little garden housed when we first moved in) has started to flourish and will hopefully give us some nice berries again this year. But even if it doesn't, there are many many elderberries round here on the pathways, along with huge masses of dogroses that provide the Vitamin C rich rosehips that served us so well through the winter. This year I want to make cordials of both these healthful berries for the kids and I'm absolutely dying to make elderberry liqueur with some good gin. Hmmmm....

I'm hoping to get a few berry bushes as well, since berries are the preferred fruit for Primal eaters such as myself and with good reason too. A blackberry bush won't be necessary though, with the enormous number of bushes round here. Just have to make sure I actually beat the birds (and the other residents, who although they ignore the healthier elderberries and rosehips, quickly strip the blackberries from their prickly stems) and get in a decent supply for the winter. But as far as foraging goes, this year I will likely spend most of my time outdoors picking nettles. I have never tried cooking with nettles but I have been drinking nettle tea and have seen the difference it makes, all that good chlorophyll and other minerals.

But I am very new to all this, and have always suffered a slightly less than green thumb, so I guess I'll have to keep you posted! Any comments from seasoned growers will be welcomed with open arms! Next time I'll have a couple more Primal recipes for those of you thinking that it's just not possible to turn kids Primal. Not to say that we are perfect, but we're getting there, one day at a time...