Remember the lettuce?

Its been a couple of weeks since I last discussed the various successes and the many, many failures of my abilities in the gardening area, or in my case the yard area.  Well I am impressed, with myself that is.  I have successfully looked after a number of plants and my my, you should see my lettuce.  In fact my yard has been dubbed the 'tropical paradise of our street' by a few friends because of the shere volume of plants that are suddenly appearing.  There is now a small area in which to sit, eat and hang washing which one can barely swing a cat in.  The answer to this little dilemma is to sit and eat but forget the washing.

To many it would not be a great feat to have grown a bit of lettuce from seed, did you get that 'from seed', but to me its like an achievement that should be honoured in some way, maybe a certificate stating 'Helen, you can now grow things'.  Maybe this is a little too far but you get my drift, I'm really pleased. 

I'm going to relish every bloody mouthful of this lettuce because after weeks of talking to it and pleading with it to grow efficiently, yes I really did, I have finally grown enough to make my Mediterranean salads and to feed my very hungry African land snail; I haven't asked the snail if rocket takes its fancy but surely, everyone loves rocket. 

Two varieties were sewn including rocket and salad bowl red and green lettuce.  The rocket is lovely and peppery with a sweet edge and I was thinking some luscious pesto must be made from this and that will make for some good fun trying to balance a good recipe.

It does not end here, my growing talents have extended to tomatoes, courgettes, sweet peas and herbs.  I will point out now that I have merely planted these and not developed them from seed, that would certainly be too much this year, but I anticipate with my growing confidence I may seek to do something like that.  This is all courtesy of the godfather of growing; grandad John.  I talked about him in a previous entry and he has been a real help in getting this growing lark started.

I thought you might like to look at some pictures:
                                                                                                

Mirabelle Tomato

Courgette

Tumbling Tomato

I'm still very much a gardening virgin but I know that given time I can become the green fingered slash cookery goddess I know I want to be and I know I harp on about sustainability but its the future so embrace it. I certainly am trying to embrace it and I think the future holds some exciting things for me and my trowel.

All I'm going to say is, watch this space.