Counting chickens

The month of May has arrived, which in London means that all danger of frost has theoretically passed. I say theoretically, as I don't think that a city that is capable of snow in June can really have passed all danger of snow by the end of April. Still, garden websites say I can act as if it has and I can't keep everything in pots till July, so I decided to plant everything out and hope they survive. Everything is still pretty tiny, so the garden as a whole looks pretty grotty in photos – a sea of brown earth with tiny, almost indiscernible patches of green (all too many of which are actually weeds), which is why this week's photos are all close-ups.

This was another week of discovering that my kind of chronic pain and gardening don't mix well. It was a joy putting everything in at the time, but I suffered for it the next day and the next. I didn't even do all the planting. My husband did the lion's share and 99% of the digging, but he's not got my issues with dandelions, so I went after a few myself, which I knew at the time I shouldn't be doing, but then I pretty much shouldn't be doing anything, and it's pretty difficult to either manage not to have anything you want done or get other people to do it for you (and not feel guilty about not being able to do anything of any practical use for them in return, especially when what you want is something as non-essential as dandelion removal).

I am now trying not to count my chickens before they hatch. I keep imagining the vegetables we will be enjoying if all this works out, despite the fact that past experience tells me I'm likely to get only a tiny fraction and at least some of my crops will be inedible or fail to grow in their entirety. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get at least one corn on the cob though. I've heard they're far, far sweeter freshly picked, so it's the garden-fresh vegetable I'm most longing to try. Not counting any chickens here, honest, but at two cobs per plant, the eight plants I had room to put in could produce as many as 16 cobs (I pretty much guarantee they won't, but at least one each for me and the other half would be nice and any more would be a bonus).