Garden bloggers' Q & A

I'm a bit of a sucker for those quiz things where people have to answer the same set of questions and thus reveal a lot about themselves you wouldn't otherwise have found out. So how could I resist when Su Harris, who lives in Suffolk and whose new but already rather fine blog can be found here, said she'd picked me for a shiny new pair of awards: the Beautiful Blogger Award and the One Lovely Blog Award.




Thanks Su, especially for the chance to indulge myself shamelessly. The idea is you list seven random things about yourself: since it's random, I think it can be pretty much anything, but I'm never any good at thinking up interesting things so I hope I'm not breaking the rules by picking seven questions from the Guardian's Q&A in the Saturday magazine (not, you'll be glad to hear, the one about sex).

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Beth Chatto, for continuing feisty and undeterred ploughing her own furrow and letting her own curiosity and energy lead her instead of borrowing other people's ideas.

What has been your most embarrassing moment?
I once settled myself down on the loo in front of a bathroom window which happened to have no curtains on it (we'd only just moved in): a moment later it was brought to my attention that there was a large, loud and boisterous bonfire night party going on in the garden directly facing our house.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My nose is exceedingly long and pointed.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
I eat crunchy peanut butter from the jar with a teaspoon when nobody's looking.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
A large two-acre field of sandy loam with a spectacular view, right outside my back door.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Actually, absolutely, stunning and lovely.

What's the closest you've come to death?
I once travelled at speed up the side of a very high mountain in the Caucasus near Chechnya in a clapped-out Skoda with two Russians swigging neat vodka out of a two-litre bottle. When the driver got out at the top (the bottle by now empty) he could no longer stand. To this day I have no idea how we didn't go over one of the precipitously steep drops at the side of the crumbling road.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
That this too shall pass.

Now all I have to do is to nominate my own bloggers to receive the award: brace yourselves for some random revelations from:

VP
Victoria at Victoria's Back Yard
Claire at Plantpassion
The Patient Gardener
The lovely and inimitable Esther

Feel free to either post more random things than the not-entirely-random selection above or answer the same questions if you want. And if anyone else wants to join in be my guest!

Bigamous blogging

OK I admit it - I've been two-timing my blog.

Those nice people at online retailer Crocus are branching out from their Chelsea medal winning range of herbaceous perennials and such like, and have started selling fruit and veg plants (and seeds). They kindly but perhaps a little foolhardily asked me about my allotment. So I told them. At length. Again and again.

So all my witterings have now become their kitchen garden blog. Actually I've been secretly wanting to do this for ages - I'm a compulsive grower of fruit and veg and have been for years, but only occasionally allow them onto these pages. They will still turn up here from time to time, but now I can also go on about them at great length and in more detail than you could ever have thought possible.

You, too, can live through the harvest of every pea pod by my side: all you have to do is click here....