Tayto!

Yup. My earlies are sprouting and doing potato-y things!

I had another visit from the insomnia monster in the small hours, so have been feeling tragically tired all day. I finally fell asleep at about 5.30am and had a disturbing dream about Mick Jagger... Weirdly, when I woke up and looked at Blipfoto one of the first photos I saw was a beautiful portrait of Bianca Jagger. Creepy... Anyway that bad night and the cold, wet weather have put pay to any gardening today. I even ducked out of going for a walk because I'm so shattered I felt that if I got rained on I might cry.

Instead I made bread rolls and lunch for everyone. It was nice to have all five of us here.
This afternoon I got stuck into the bookwork and VAT and found an enormous pile of unopened post (whoops). Richard took Tess to Ilfracombe for an ice cream while the teens did their disappearing act.

I'm so not with it that I put some old flapjacks in the oven to freshen them up and when I smelt burning 3/4s of an hour later, I thought, "That can't be anything to do with me, I'm not cooking anything." Sheesh.

We all had dinner together again - which is normal for some but a major achievement for me (especially the no TV bit), but Tess did manage to sabotage it somewhat by trying to divert every conversation back to her, even though I really wanted to talk to Joel about his GSCEs and getting his choices for next year finalised.

I had a check on the garden this evening and my mood was lifted by the sight of my first 2 potato shoots peeping out of the soil.

Hopefully a local gardener is coming tomorrow to dig out some old tree and shrub stumps that we can't get out of the ground. They're right where I want to plant my fruit trees and bee-friendly flowers. I'm really embarrassed about the "work in progress" look of our garden though - it's a bit like someone looking over your shoulder when you're painting or writing something and you know it all looks a bit messy and random and knickers down.