Mixed success in the garden

 We've got a window of opportunity to go to the caravan this coming weekend, for 3 nights between appointments, so we're grabbing it.  I'll do a couple of meals to freeze and take with us, and make some goodies too - a cake and some cheese scones I think.

I'm happy with the garden as it is now, things are growing and filling out the spaces, albeit slowly in view of the weird weather.  Some of our veggies and fruit are inconsistent - the strawberries we bought and planted this year have been terrible so far, only a few tiny green fruits appeared, and then disappeared before they even got a pink tinge.  No sign of any more fruiting, so it looks like no strawberries at all this year.  The first lot of radishes mostly bolted, although the few we did get were lovely, we've sown more.  The spring onion seeds didn't come up at all, a second sowing are coming through.  Some of the courgette babies rotted with all the rain we've had, we picked our first two full size ones yesterday.  Tomatoes and mini cucumbers are finally beginning to fruit, although a couple of the plants look a bit sickly.  Carrots, which are a short, early variety, are being extremely slow to fatten up, although I think it might be due to husband sowing them too thickly, they're a tangled mass at the moment and need thinning out.

All the plants I bought for the new flower bed are doing well now, after a few initial failures and replacements, some are starting to flower, in a couple of weeks or so the bed will look lovely.  The 3 climbers I planted to grow up trellis in a corner of the garden that's a bit overlooked are doing very well now, all 3 (winter jasmine, pink clematis and everlasting sweet pea) have put on loads of growth and I've tied them in 2 or 3 times.  Some of the roses (they were already here, I've not bought any new ones) are starting to bloom too, there's a lovely large flowered white climber and a couple of red ones, a few more have yet to flower.  I think next year I might move some of the roses and put them all together in a dedicated rose bed.

This garden has been a lot of hard work, it was pretty much a blank canvas with hardly any flowers other than some very neglected roses and an absolute mass of bluebells, no veggies at all, and all the hard landscaping of concrete, gravel and pavers, it's taken weeks and weeks to get it to the stage where we're turning it into our space.  It's going to be so lovely in due course.  We both spend loads of time out in the garden now, husband is as brown as a berry - he tans easily, I don't, I burn easily and get heat rash so I tend to cover up.

Off to the GP at 10 am, it can't come soon enough for me, I woke up just before 5 in agony again.  I'm sick of taking painkillers.