Vicky bought a Nintendo Wii. I’m not going to do a review of it as there will be a million and one out there, however we think it’s brilliant – good fun and makes your arms ache the day after.

If you ever have to dismantle a greenhouse please do not just smash it to pieces and let nature take its course – I’m still picking out handfuls of glass after months of working on the soil.

That crazy Carol Klein woman did a series and book called Grow Your Own Veg. She always had a robin watching her, and I do too – I feel like I have arrived.

Incidentally, I say she’s crazy because she always seemed to make guinea pig noises when she got excited. I can’t wait to see whether this page gets searched for…

I didn’t know that frogs could dig, did you?

When I was walking up the garden I noticed a hole, an thought the earth had settled from all the raking. So, I went to fill the hole in – and it moved!

A frog had buried himself a few inches down in the loose earth, presumably to get cool out of the sun! He wasn’t impressed when I coaxed him out for this photograph, you can tell by his frown, but it was for his own good – he’d only have been raked to death otherwise.

It kind of explains a lot – over the course of digging the garden I have seen dozens of frogs, one sadly impaled on my fork. But they just seemed to appear – you’d turn over a clod of earth and lo’ there would be a frog. I said then that they must have been dug in, but it seemed implausible due to our soil being wet heavy clay, but perhaps I was right?

We’ve planted our first crops!

Vicky has grown some broad beans from seed – they’re doing nicely, despite my best attempts at killing them – when I came to plant them out they were dry and root bound but they’ll be ok. Spuds are in plus I’ve directly sown cabbages, sprouts, kale, broccoli, rocket, lettuce, radish, beetroot, peas and others I’ve forgotten about. I think I’ve planted my rows too close but this year we’re just hoping for the best – whatever we harvest is a bonus.

The local garden centre had bare root green privet at 85p per plant – we had 32 feet to fill so I dug 32 plants in today too. They were more scraggly than I had expected, I thought they’d be dwarf, green bushy things but they are in fact spindly things that look like they are dead. But, by the end of this summer they should be well on their way. Typically planting out has coincided with a dry spell so I will be out every night with my watering can after work.

Not very exciting, but we’ve started breaking down and raking the bed where the lawn will go. This has been harder than the digging…

And, I have to confess, that I have had a bit of a change of heart. I didn’t want to use any chemicals on the land – hence all the digging etc. But I have come to the conclusion that if we are going to be able to grow a lawn from seed then we will need to spray it first – the number of roots and shoots in there is large and so I think it will be too much competition for the grass seed. This is a problem for me because the spray will unavoidably wash into the rest of the soil, end up in the lawn shavings and ultimately end up in our food which wasn’t what I intended to achieve… I feel a bit sad about that, but I think it’s probably a sacrifice that will need to be made.