You know what they say, if it don't kill you, it'll make you stronger ...

What a week ! Last weekend was spent digging a hole in the freezing cold and wet, and Christmas shopping when the sun was shining bright ! Go figure !

My good friend has said that I've been uncharacteristically quiet on the boards this week. 10 hour working days has pretty much seen to that. Out of a team of 7, I've had one yet to start, two on annual leave, one (the boss) off sick and one seconded to another department. This has left me and my gem of a colleague carrying the whole department. Things have just been manic, and all I've done when I've got home at night is crashed in front of the tv too knackered to even think.

Good news about my recent promotion application though when I got an invite for an interview for next Thursday. Within 24 hrs that got changed to Wednesday (showing how flexible and accommodating I can be!). Tomorrow we fly to London about 4pm for our dear friend's birthday party on Saturday, returning on Monday evening. So that means, I had tonight to prepare my spare set of examples to be used at the interview, with some of Tuesday if I'm lucky.

So with lashing rain and gale force winds, I get home about 6 tonight, straight out to the greenhouses, only to find that one of the plastic sheets has blown out of the front of the small one. GERRRRRRATE ! Half hour spent getting soaking wet, before we both decide to call it a day (or night), prop the sheet up against the gap with a couple of rather large pots and to try again in the morning keeping fingers crossed that no other damage occurs overnight.

I had planned to pop to the post office in the morning to post some ebay stuff I had sold, fill the car up with petrol and buy some more paraffin for the g/h heaters. Guess what I'll be doing now ?

I think I passed hysteria about 4 hours ago, so now I've calmly cobbled together 5 out of the 6 work examples, packed, sent my apologies to the ebay guys for the delay in posting and finally got round to writing some blog.

Now the good stuff.

My calendula seedlings have exploded. They're pretty damn huge and doing well in the heated g/h. Same with the alstroemeria seedlings. Just hope I can keep the g/h warm enough when the big freeze hits. I think I've even got a pea poking it's wee head through. The solent wight garlic is doing well, but the runty elephant has yet to show. The onions and purple garlic are poking through the straw mulch nicely.

Everything has got well watered today and after the week of strong winds, we probably needed it.

So supreme being, what I need tonight is for the wind and rain to stop and the sun to be shining brightly about 8am so that I can get out and fix the g/h before running around like a lunatic getting everything else done before take off.

I'm looking forward to some enjoyable mayhem over the weekend meeting up with some very good friends, rush over to see the family on Sunday/Monday before flying back Monday pm. So, if I'm still alive, I'll see you all next week ... even stronger !