Now, I know I’ll probably regret this in the summer, but I hate winter.

It’s not the season’s fault actually, just that it tends to come with cold weather and the cold weather leads to frost in the morning, bare trees and dead grass. Not that I care too much for the grass, it’s the ice that troubles me the most. Where the ice has stretched its cold fingers under the frost covers, the plants have burned, leaving black leaves and the odd lonely looking pepper caught mid way through maturing. I’ve picked the veggies that have no leaves left to feed them, if only to keep for the seeds in spring.

The other problem is that the ground tends to be frozen and difficult to work. The last bed that was dug (while my mother was here), took a whole morning and it is only about 6 meters long (granted, it’s also only half a meter wide). We should have waited but a trip to the nursary meant bringing home seedlings and they needed a home. The cauliflower didn’t fit in the bed, so they’re still in the wendy house in their seed trays. I would’ve planted them last weekend but sadly pressing analysis at work had to take presidence and no gardening was done at all. In fact, the actual weekend consisted of a movie on Sunday afternoon. Sad, sad, sad.

That said, we found bright-lights swiss chard seeds and they’re quietly germinating in the protective environment of the wendy house that now has a roof and windows. It still gets cold in there but at least the deadly frost is kept at bay. They’ll need planting soon, so a new bed has to be dug, like it or not. In fact, it should probably happen next weekend.

I sometimes don’t know why I’ve embarked on this mission, since I’m still buying veggies from the market and, honestly, they’re good local quality and not expensive at all. It’s a lot of work, especially if one has a full time job but, come spring, I’ll snap back and get stuck in. The cold weather just gets me down sometimes.