A Regular Pair of Percy Throwers

Hmmm - maybe that's showing my age a bit, name checking Percy Thrower. Perhaps I should have made myself appear young and vibrant by using Alan Titchmarsh instead. Ah well, too late now.

For the golden, youthful, readers who have absolutely no idea who I'm waffling on about - this is the late great Percy Thrower; arguably the first television "superstar" gardener.

I'm certain that everybody knows what Alan Titchmarsh looks like, but I've found that if I pepper the odd posting with well known names, like Alan Titchmarsh, I get a few more hits than if I don't mention people like Alan Titchmarsh.

However, I don't propose to keep on going in this vein. No, indeed, as I sat myself down to witter on, I intended to write about Mrs The Millbrooker and my gardening exploits of the last few days.

It seems to be about this time of year that we get a sudden a fit of enthusiasm for trying to sort out the weed infested ribbon of land that we think of as our garden.

The plan is to try and make the soil - which has been augmented in volume over the last few years with a possibly not-too-beneficial mixture of builders' rubble, plaster dust and rotting chipboard - a bit more suitable for actually growing things by sowing alfalfa as a green manure.

But first we needed to dig a whacking great long trench in which to bury the armoured electricity cables that carry power to the Rathaus (that's the large, green shed at the back of the photo above).

That job largely fell to me; my rippling he-man muscles being deemed entirely suitable for the task.

How happy was I when I finally got to fill the blessed thing back in again?

And now, once the great British summer decides to stop hissing down upon us, I'll have some fun sowing the alfalfa seeds in the vain hope that the cats won't dig them all up again as they enjoy their splendid and luxuriously appointed outdoor litter tray.

Once that's been done, perhaps we'll be able to enjoy more bumper harvests like last year's pot grown garlic which finally got dug up and then hung up to dry last week. The bulbs might only be small, but they're very pungent. Mmmm.