On the upside though Plants are also shooting away and flower buds have appeared on many including the roses and what else have I got???? POTATOES !! My mother always used to say 'where there's a will there's a way' and she was right. I had an empty flower border so I filled it up with British Queen seed potatoes and I have planted some of the Maris Piper in the fruit garden. No sign of the British Queen but the Maris Piper are well under way, the only difficulty I am going to have is earthing up the Maris Piper as I did not plant in rows but rather made a hole where there was a space and put a potato in, but I have figured a way round that as well, I have some sacks of multi purpose compost and so I shall earth them up with that, it was going on the garden anyway so I haven't lost anything. Course the slugs and snails have taken the recent rain as a sign that the dinner bell has been rung and are busy munching away at prized plants. Now I am all for organic gardening but at the present moment I don't have any beer to make slug pubs and things being the way they are I couldn't make any if I wanted to. Now I do believe that slugs and snails have a place in the garden, namely the compost bin where they can munch away to their hearts content and make lovely rich compost along with their buddies the worms for me to use on the soil. But when they start taking liberties and eat my plants then it is time to do something about it, so as soon as I can shake the canister slug pellets will be going on the soil until I can wield a pair of scissors without pain to turn empty coke a cola bottles (of which we have an abundance of in this family) into reservoirs of alcohol in which the pests can happily drink themselves to death.  Having to have this time off has taught me two valuable lessons, 1) if you want to have a half way decent garden then you cannot turn your back on it for a minute and the second one? Simple, at my age I don't bounce as good as I used to!!!!!