Hi, I'm Dad, better known as Grumpy, a name given to me by my granddaughter.  I have to agree the name is most apt and I'm quite proud of it.  As the old thing says, we were coerced into this blogging thingy by the daughter, bless her!  Apparently I will blog words of wisdom on gardening and the old thing on cooking.  The old thing is a pretty mean cook; she manages to keep plenty of excess pounds on my waistline, hence my need to garden to try to contain some of them!  So there you have it, I potter in the garden and chat a lot at the allotments, I ain't no expert.  About the only thing Alan Titchmarch and I have in common is that we both kept an evil eye on Charlie Dimmock!   I also enjoy cooking, I'm a dab hand with the frying pan and wok.

Neither garden nor allotment will see much of me today, it's raining heavily.  Good for the allotment, especially the spuds.  Every year I say I will cut down on the amount I grow but I still managed to sow 21 rows.  They range from first earlies through to maincrop.  The red Duke of York are not far off being ready, I'll have to have a scratch around next week.  Everything else is looking OK at the moment and this rain is saving me walking miles with watering cans.  In the poly-tunnel all is well, some tomatoes have set, soon be picking.  The worm juice is proving invaluable as a feed yet again, it goes on everything.

Going to the Good Food Show and Gardeners World Show at the NEC next week.  Last time we went we turned right as we entered and ended up tasting all kinds of disgusting flavoured vodkas, rather splendid malts and most intoxicants in between.  All this before nine-thirtyish in the morning, by the time we got to the Gardening Show, old thing was Delia and I was Monty!  This year the plan is to turn left, but hey, I had a plan to not grow so many spuds and what did I do!

In my next blog (if there is one after this effort) I'll try and go through some of the varieties of veg that are growing and how they are fairing.  The old thing may slot in a couple of photos, far too technical for me.  It's still raining so time to cast a mean eye on the greenhouse and then sample the old things raspberry vodka, I think that's the order to do it!!