And so it begins...

Well here we are, the start of a brand new blog. Welcome one and all, we hope you keep coming back to see how things progress. First up a little background is probably in order. I'm Paul, my fiancée is Melanie and together we've spent most of the spring and summer turning our horribly overgrown mess of a back garden into somewhere we'd like to spend our spare time.

Here's a glance back to how things were early this year

And here's a picture from a bit later when thing were at their clearest

Although we didn't really set out with a plan we ended up using a lot of the space we cleared for growing vegetables and before long we were well and truly bitten by the 'grow your own' bug. Neither of us had any real experience but that proved to be half the fun and surprisingly we ended up doing rather well (even if we do say so ourselves). While we didn't have enough room to grow large quantities of anything during the summer months we managed to dine on home grown sweet corn, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, runner beans and sweet peppers as well as a few potatoes.

We had so much fun we've decided to go bigger and better for next year and have put our names down on the waiting lists for a couple of local allotments. All being well, come the spring, we'll have been allocated a slot at least one of the two sites and be all set for an exciting year. That's where this blog comes in, we plan to document the trials and tribulations we face (and conquer...) while we wait for, renovate and finally use whatever allotment we end up with. In the meantime we're continuing to work our own garden just incase the allotment waiting lists don't move as fast as we're hoping so either way there should be some fun with nature to be had in the coming months. Hope you keep tuned to find out.