mary, mary quite contrary

Girly gardeners. Yeuch, you know the type; clean gloves of the highest quality, daintily deadheading a miniature rose while perching on a soft knee cushion upholstered in delicately-sprigged oilcloth... which she made by hand. Everything in her garden is weed-, bug- and snail-free, her manicure remains intact under those pastel leather gauntlets, and she's wearing white. In fact, let's face it, she's on Wisteria Lane and her name is Bree. Real life: thank crap it's not actually like that.

But imagine the horrors when I realise that somehow I've ended up with pink Hunter wellies and pink gardening gloves. How did that happen? And I'm directing operations to a man hired to cut my hedges! (As with most everything, I blame all my current failings on being pregnant, and being not very good at it... the hedges or the pregnant.) Heaven forbid I turn into a girly gardener.

We only moved to this house five years ago, and for two of those five we had to leave it to the mercies of tenants (of, ahem, mixed quality). So the garden certainly hasn't reached full potential. But in 2009, during the Summer before we abandoned it for Singapore, I kept a photo diary on the first day of every month, to chart progress. And it was incredibly rewarding - especially for a veg-patch numpty who has no idea what's supposed to happen when.

As luck would have it, Ginny, the amazing blogger and all-round renaissance woman, has been linking up like-minded people for a weekly garden journal, and I'm really interested to see what people grow, especially to eat, in other parts of the world. Click on her name there if you want to do the same.

So here's where we are in the North of Scotland at the beginning of June 2012 (and as you can see from the weeds, I've clearly got some way to go before I reach Bree-like status on the girly gardening front!). It's averaging about 10-12 degrees C at the moment, and it's been quite dry and sunny, so everything's suddenly starting to flourish. I hope the coming month will bring significant progress, June usually does.

the largest part of the plot

rhubarb, or Barbara to her friends (she's out of control), and some huge pots sown with mint seeds that never came up, what a waste

the sunflower patch, will we beat the 2008 personal best of 3 metres?

broad beans doing nicely, and space at the back for a couple of courgettes that are ready to go in

shallots, peas and chives - I like the flowers too much to snip them off!

a rampant cardoon and the raspberry canes (which I may live to regret as they're trying to colonise the whole garden)

wild strawberries sown by a generously incontinent bird

it's year four for these young trees, but could these be my first ever apples? I hope so!!!

And I have one photo printed out and stuck into my actual, paper garden journal. A reminder for when I feel like I'm losing the battle against time, slugs, wet grass and bad weather. In Spring 2007, the veg patch looked like this...

dismal huh?