Gardening, growing and zen!

Last summer was our first summer with our very own garden and I was keen to try growing a few things. I successfully grew some tomatoes from seed and also planted some broad beans and rocket. It was fun - I enjoyed looking after the plants and the children loved helping out with the planting, the watering and watching the plants produce things we could then all eat!

This year I still wanted to grow some veggies but was wary of being over-ambitious with a newborn to look after. I'm fortunate that our neighbour loves gardening and grows a lot of vegetables herself. I had a chat with her about what might be easy / fairly low maintenance things to grow this year and she kindly gave me some tomato plants she had grown from seed, as well as some green bean plants too. I also read somewhere that radishes are easy and quick to grow so bought some seeds and planted some of those too.

With a bit of help from the children, I got everything planted and in place. We have watered and watched as flowers have grown on the tomato plants, followed by tomatoes that are currently green and small but will hopefully grow and ripen before too long. The bean plants have flowers right now so hoping we will get some beans a bit later this summer.

In the same way that cooking is a way for me to switch off, relax and generally feel content, gardening has now become that too. I don't get a lot of time to do much out there but a few minutes here and there are fine if that's all I can get. Our garden is quite large and a little unruly and wild, in a good way, but that means there is always tidying and little bits of pruning to be done. I get a real sense of satisfaction from making even the smallest area look a bit neater!

As with cooking, when the children are out in the garden with me, they love to help or just to busy themselves with something outside. I'm having a good time, they're having a good time, we're all pretty relaxed - it's great!

Have you been growing anything this year? Do you and your children enjoy doing a bit of gardening? If you don't have a garden, do you grow any herbs in pots on a windowsill or have the odd house plant to nurture?