Spring is the time of plans and projects.

When I'm not travelling around as much as possible (Usually because I have no money or time left off work!) I can usually be found at home, with Darcy either trying my hand at a new recipe in my shiny new kitchen (I'd take photos, but food presentation is not a skill I seem to posses!) or working in my extravagantly large (at least for the size of the house in the UK) garden.

Before buying my own place, I either ignored gardening as something my parents did, or I grew the odd herb in pots, until they inevitably died. However when I was searching for a property and I came across my current place, it really was the combination of a relatively large kitchen, a south facing conservatory and the 3 tier garden (lets just say it's a little hilly in my area) that helped me get over the postage stamp sized bathroom and spare bedroom.
Admittedly last year I mostly focused on redecorating the house, and fixing the many issues I'd inherited from the previous owners (leaky pipes - lots of). The garden got a bit of love, but in general it was late in the season before much of the work got completed, so with the exception of 100's (I do mean that, I went a bit crazy with the seed packet) of strawberry plants, and some fast growing salad leaves, I mostly just kept the garden alive, and had the odd wonky step fixed before I killed myself on them.
However this year, I have a new vegetable patch, a shiny greenhouse that is already packed to the rafters, and the front garden has been dug (the "soil" here is clay so pure you could make pots from it), with many a shovel of nutrients and real soil added to it, and at last I can start to turn the plot into something a little bit more my own.
Granted, as I intend to keep up a reasonable travel schedule, money is tight, so unlike Alan Titchmarsh and co. I won't be buying £1000's of mature plants, but instead I will have to start small. Ideally from seed if I can manage it, but if not smaller pot plants will just have to do, and hopefully within a couple of years they will grow into something a bit more recognisable.
Now I will admit, my gardening knowledge is poor (see gardening history above) and at the moment I'm going down the route of "do I like it? if so I'll give it a whirl and see 1. does it grow under my care, and 2. is the first hole I put it in the right place for it?" All of this is going to take time, but for now I at least have signs of life creeping in.

Seedlings breaking through.

The butternut squash rather resembled monsters breaking through the soil.

To bring some colour back into the garden, i brought some Alpines, as they flower early and do well in pots around my patio.

Basic bedding plants I brought late last year are still flowering in their tub

 And the marigolds I planted to help control my epic aphid problem have also started flowering

 Can't beat a hardy succulent. I love a plant that is pretty bomb proof!

 Finally into my greenhouse, with the cucumber plants starting to shoot and need support

 And some of the chilli plants I over-wintered have already started flowering. More chilli sauce for me this year!