Gardening should come with a health warning

...because, for me least, it's addictive! But first, the sea...

Today really feels like the first day of spring. There have been blue skies and lots of sun all day and now here I am, sitting on the beach listening to the tide roll in. Bliss. The sea really is incredible and being able to sit by it with the greatest of ease is utterly divine. Thank you, world.

So. Gardening. Today was effectively weekend number three of Tigger Does Gardening. The morning saw me potting on some garlic plants I'd started in my newly designated Gardening Zone. I'd been thinking of putting a table out into my yard but given a) it wouldn't be appealling in the dark or the wet and b) my yard doesn't get much sunshine anyway I opted for a spot in my basement, conveniently placed for access to my Bath Garden. Now, due to the exciting upgrade that's currently I'm progress on my bathroom I also spent a fair while sorting through various piles of waiting-to-go-to-the-tip but even that felt very productive as next time a tip trip is imminent I know I've got a car full all ready to load.

I also managed to repot a couple of plants that were well overdue new homes and I now just have to wait and see if said new pots will do the trick. By this point the sunshine was veritably demanding my presence so I packed my bags and headed off to buy...more plants! The same shop that has so merrily been selling me £4 fruit trees had some indoor citrus and smelly plants, perfect for the extension at work. We already had a kumquat and now also have a lemon, a small-orange type (I forget exactly what it was, but the fruit is orange coloured and smaller than an orange but bigger than a kumquat), a lavender "tree" and a rosemary "tree". My only concern now is that the smells will all compete! The room is perfect for these plants, however, so whatever happens I'm sure they'll be happy.

At the office there are some existing trees, bushes and plants which I'm assessing one by one as to whether to keep, evolve or get rid. Today the time had come to say farewell to some bushes. My plan had been to get the roots out with my trusty digging fork but it turns out said fork wasn't so trusty after all...one of the tines bent entirely the wrong way on the first attempt to extract said roots, so I opted for "lop off the branches" destruction instead. This went surprisingly well and rather than have a bunch of twiggy "waste" I decided to try being a low-tech chipper and return the former bushes to their original home after snipping them up. Whether this turns out to be a good or bad idea I have yet to find out, but when it's mild and the sun is out I don't mind having something to keep me outside.

I used the last of my pack-of-three gooseberry and blackcurrant plants and also planted out some more of the lavender plugs I got last autumn and have been nurturing indoors. The more I plant, the closer I get to creating a planting plan but for the time being planting is fairly ad hoc. There's easily space for another 4 or 5 large tubs outside at this office and given I'm planning on using several at home as well I foresee another order happening soon. Whether every tub will have a fruit tree in remains to be seen! I'm also eyeing up the window ledges in the room with the citrus plants for some troughs of greens...

But the awareness of this growing attachment to all things plant related when I was heading home and stopped off to buy some groceries. "Oooh, jasmine, I've already got some of that...but a magnolia might be nice...and a...." Yep, i'm smitten. And with such a brilliant array of locations to play with, I'm a lucky, lucky Tigger.