Tuesday 5 June

• Plenty of rain last week! Nearly two inches in the buckets after the thunderstorm on Tuesday afternoon. The newly planted out tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes survived the battering!
• On my bike ride on the bank holiday Monday I collected elderflowers and the elderflower champagne is now bottled up.
• My bird of paradise plant, so pot bound the earth is 15 cm above the top of the pot, has two flowers this year. They last a lovely long time.
• All but one (one of the new, small bulbs) of my Amaryllis flowering this year - two already over and flower stalks removed, some others still in bud. The Amaryllis that hasn't flowered for years now has a flower bud - but one of the last to produce one. I was very puzzled why such a big bulb wasn't producing flowers, and still don't understand why it hasn't flowered for years.
• Friday evening a fox lay against the eastern fence in the evening sun all evening. I didn't need to go out so I didn't disturb it.
• I have started going out after dark as one of the courgettes was showing signs of snail/slug damage. And I successfully caught the culprit and found some snails on the other courgettes. I don't see how they are negotiating the slug collars.
• At the weekend I put in the slug collars where the French beans and runner beans are to go but only put out the beans that had actually germinated. The rest will follow as and when. They have survived their first night - always worry I've trapped a slug inside!
• On Saturday cycling through the Walthamstow wetlands I passed a family of greylag geese. One of the goslings (though nearly as big as its parents now) was sprawled on the path and just watched me as I cycled past it.
• I went to a vintage fair in Wanstead and was then looking for another fair but going down the wrong road. I was glad I went though as I found a female stag beetle on the pavement heading for the road, so picked it up and put it under some twigs in a garden.
• Rescued a small log of cherry while kayaking on Sunday which I brought home for the wood store. I have also ordered a log delivery for my next day off.
• There were instructions in magazine Simple Things for.botanical gins including rosemary and bay leaf gin. Two rosemary sprigs and 3 bay leaves in 70ml of gin, start tasting after 3 days and bottle when taste is right. The rosemary and bay leaves in the gin look very attractive in the clear glass - pity that will go when I bottle it. The suggestion for drinking it it for adding ginger ale. Seems a waste making a flavoured gin and hiding it with another taste. 

Sunday 27 May

• I've decanted the fig whisky - I will now wait another 9 months before drinking. I put it in one of the fancy bottles I have. Found 2 plastic stoppers that fit various sized bottle necks  and one of those worked fine. Would be useful to have some more of theses stoppers but can't remember where I got them!
• I've put a few 3-cornered leek in a pot to see if I can control them that way. I don't use huge amounts so a pot full will probably be about right for me.
• To Cornwall to stay with my mother for last weekend. She had potted up 4 mints - Moroccan, eau de cologne, chocolate and basil for me. Got them safely home by tube and train. My ordinary mint that I have had for years doesn't appear to have survived the winter. I like Pimms but don't like all the extras, but I do add a bit of mint.
• This week swifts above garden (though seen them earlier elsewhere), Have only seen 2, so hope one of each sex!
• Got home mid afternoon yesterday to find north facing conservatory really hot and raisin tomatoes collapsed. one still very sick today when I put out cucumbers (except one which will stay in the conservatory), courgettes and tomatoes.
• First wild strawberry - from a plant self-sown in a pot.where I have a little oak tree seedling.

Monday 7 May

• One of the sad things about being an adult is how much of one's time is spent thinking about getting stuff dry! So this weekend has been a good one. I was working Friday evening so had the morning off and got the duvet and the sleeping bag I have open under my fleecy under-blanket to the laundrette and then dry on the rotary dryer. Saturday normal weekly wash and also dried on the rotary dryer. Yesterday, I did the coverlet and the fleecy under-blanker. Today I have 4 jumpers drying outside.
• Until the last 10 minutes when one person came with his washing, I was the only one in the laundrette. Once the current owners give up then I am sure it will become something else which will cause problems - but for me only once a year.
• Twice this week I came home and took a cup of herb tea and book outside in the garden and sat for a while. 
• Two hour ride on my bike on Saturday. Out of the house 8.45 but the tow path already busy with walkers, joggers and cyclists. Down to Victoria Park - both east and west bits. - then a detour round Wick Wood (lots of cow parsley/sweet Cecily with side of the path on the north).
• Rhubarb crumble again today.
• Found French marigolds in shop around the corner so got them and potted them into pots for deterring greenfly in the conservatory. Also got basil from the supermarket which I put in a bigger pot for the conservatory.
• I pulled up 3-corned leek yesterday. I've recently read, and my friend in Cardiff I was staying with last weekend confirmed, that it was very invasive. The patch was definitely spreading and there are clumps of it elsewhere in the garden. Still bulbs of it in the earth, but I am ready fot it to take a few years to get rid of.
• Wisteria is looking lovely along the fence. 
• Several butterflies in the garden today, but only seen 2 bees.

Another "small" garden my garden would be lost in!

The May issue of The Simple Things has an article about a "small garden in Kent: proof that you don't need masses of space to have a productive patch."

It is a 150 foot plot - so well over twice as long as mine. Mine is a thin garden, presumably this garden is wider as if it was a long ribbon of a garden it would, I think, be mentioned. So the house is obviously wider and probably detached.

The only guide to real small gardens I've come across is "Big Gardens in Small Spaces" by Martyn Cox which I got when I visited his garden when it was open here in Waltham Forest - and it is less than half the size of mine.

Monday 23 April

• On Sunday 15 April to Leytonstone Green Drinks at the Walnut Tree. Only Maureen and Rosemarie there, both of whom I know. (I tried an elderflower cider, which was rather odd tasting!).
• Everything has now got very green. One outdoor pot plant with a dead-looking plant sprouted several inches new growth overnight!
• A few of my amaryllis showing green leaves, so potted up all 11, and also 2 begonias.
• I am not very good at sawing, but yesterday slowly worked my way through a large log rescued from the Lea, so made two that will fit in stove.
• National Trust magazine came in compostible wrapper. Read about this after I had put it in kitchen pedal bin, but able to rescue it and put it in the compost bucket. Hope it breaks down faster than the lavatory paper wrappers!
• Got a scabious from Tesco. Supposed to be perennial, but this is third with no sign of the ones from the previous 2 years having survived.
• My friend Beate had some logs to be sawn up for woodburner but has had to leave them as they have stag beetle larva.
• Yesterday cycling to help out at canoe club at sprint races when Lesley cycling to yoga in Jubilee Park caught up with me and said, "I thought it was you. No one else I know cycles so loaded up!"
• Saw lots of butterflies yesterday. Two days running a pair of great tits were looking for insects on the wisteria, the bay and the buckthorn.
• Garden has a lot of honesty in flower, forget-me-nots and primulas. 
• Daffodils over so now watering with fertiliser to encourage flowering next year.

Sunday 15 April

• I've just had a delivery of a little mulberry bush - only a few inches high. It's for a pot and should be fruiting next year. I've always fancied a mulberry - but in my imagination it has been a tree in the middle of a huge lawn! I've potted it up into a bigger pot and put it in position.
• Yesterday I also put out the Babington leek (you don't pull it you cut it, and it spreads), the welsh onions, and a birthday card which has seeds in the papers (no idea what flowers they will burn out to be.
• I've moved a compost bin, getting 3-4 buckets worth of compost for the tomato/courgette bed in the process.
• My first picking of rhubarb today. Nice juicy stalks. Because of cold and/or dry springs I haven't had good rhubarb for years. I made a crumble.
• My cranial osteopath thinks the twinges in my knee are a touch of arthritis. She has given me an exercise and I've been looking in my herb books. Deciding to try celery, ginger, lavender and rose to help it (not all in the same application!)

Sunday 1 April

• Today with friends who live in Plumstead. In the afternoon went to Lesnes Abbey Woods for a walk with their two dogs. Wild daffodils and wood anemones out.
• Cycle ride Good Friday and yesterday along the old River Lea south of Leabridge Road alongside the Hackney Marsh football fields. Water high and flowing strongly. Gravel island just below outflow of flood relief tunnel small on Friday and completely submerged yesterday.
• Started moving pots away from conservatory yesterday but was interrupted by rain.
• Have ordered drawf mulberry (small enough for a pot and fruits first year) from The Organic Gardening catalogue. 
• Also ordered 3 tomato plants where the fruit will dry on the plan and can be stored in jars of olive oil. Have always fancied drying tomatoes but, without an aga, that means hours in the oven, albeit on a low heat.
• Got the May edition of Country Living magazine which had a supplement "Big ideas for small gardens". The gardens featured in the magazine are always huge so no inspiration for me and my small garden at all. So I was very pleased until I opened up the booklet to find a picture of a large garden! I've emailed to complain, carefully being polite! 
• Got an organic lettuce in Tesco's yesterday. Took it out of plastic wrapper to find a load of greenfly!