MONO MONDAY - FAVOURITE PLACE

I have several favourite places, but my "most" favourite is our garden - and Mr. HCB does sterling work out there for most of the year.  I normally potter around the herbaceous border and this morning planted some chrysanthemums and carnations grown from seed by Mr. HCB.  

Normally, the garden is relegated to second place because cricket is at the top of his list, but this year, of course, with cricket off, the garden has become his Numero Uno place to go and for the first time for many years, I am now in second place for the summer.  There is also the fact that there is no sport on the television, so we find we do chat more in the evenings, which can only be good.

A couple of weeks ago, Mr. HCB ordered several things from Marshalls, and they have now all been delivered and look good.  However, he is not so enamoured with Thompson & Morgan, who have failed miserably in delivering grow bags and also tomato plants.  Apparently, his tomato plants were despatched by Royal Mail on 19th May and to date, he is still waiting for them, so its anyone’s guess what the poor things will look like when they arrive and as for the grow bags, he has almost written them off!

Having ordered some polytunnels from Marshalls, they arrived at the end of last week, but because the high winds, Mr. HCB deferred installing them in the garden, but today, he was up early and was excited about planting out his courgettes and then putting the polytunnels over them.  Two of the polytunnels are what is known as “breathable” so the rain - when we get some - will be able to get through but the other is polythene, so will get quite hot inside.  Here he is inspecting them - and you can see behind him the framework for his tromboncinos - climbing courgettes, which with the other courgettes, will hopefully keep us going all summer long.  Here for Mono Monday is Mr. HCB in my favourite place, modelling his fashionable gardening trousers with rips which our granddaughter pays a lot of money to emulate.

I decided not to use Vinnie, our Waitrose delivery young man today, as my main Blip, because he was a little “camera shy”.  Interestingly, he did say that Dawn, who has been to us twice, told him that he had “her customer”, although she hadn’t told him about the photographs!  I’ve put him in as an extra, in colour - what a lovely young man - thanked him and told him he was doing a wonderful job!

“I grow plants for many reasons: 
     to please my eye or to please my soul, 
to challenge the elements 
     or to challenge my patience, 
for novelty or for nostalgia, 
     but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.”
David Hobson