I have to admit something.  I can't remember how much any of my children weighed when they were born.  I'm also hazy on when they began to walk and I've no idea what any of their first words were.  However, I think I will always remember Saturday 27th March 2010 because this was the date my six-year-old daughter divided her first perennial.

I'm a massive fan of division because it instantly gives you new plants, it improves the performance of most perennials and it's so simple that, as Ava so ably demonstrated, even a child can do it

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This week I have been spending far too much time worrying about particle sizes, silica content and British Standards BS EN 1177:2008 and BS EN71-Part 3.  This is not fun.  Which is slightly ironic as it should be.  We are, after all, talking play sand

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I have to admit that I am rarely happy with my own garden.  I always see the flaws, and nothing ever really turns out quite as well as I hoped.  I like to think of myself as an optimist, but in horticultural terms, I'm more of a glass-half-empty kind of girl

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Now is a good time to plant raspberries.  I was reminded of this by that jolly helpful Toby chap on Gardeners' World (although I did find it very hard to concentrate on what he was saying, so distracted was I by his ensemble - lace up boots, belted jacket, and a jauntily-tied scarf - it was as though Greenacre was doubling as a branch of Accessorize)

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This week I have mostly been laying paths.  Actually, if we're being truthful, this week I have mostly been re-laying paths which I laid very badly in the first place

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Now before I begin, I'd like to get one thing clear - it's not yet spring.  As you may know, if you are unlucky enough to see my tweets, I get strangely irate about this.  I'm not really sure why.  There are many, many better things to get irate about - international human rights violations, climate change deniers, or pretty much anything that Sarah Palin says - but no, I expend my energy being cross about people ignoring the vernal equinox (well that and young men wearing their jeans below the pant line)

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I got very excited about some sticks this weekend.  Admittedly these sticks have roots and I'm faithfully promised they will, one day, produce fruit, but they also seem to look remarkably like... sticks

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