"Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"

This year, as well as growing them in the ground, I've been experimenting with growing potatoes in containers. The reasons are numerous: you can grow more without having to dig, the compost is clean so the risk of blight is minimised, and because the containers are moveable they can be grown in otherwise idle corners. This year my containers have been of the cheap-and-cheerful variety; I bought some growbags, cut off one end and emptied the compost into a spare bag. I then turned the growbag inside out so that the black side was outside in order to let the compost warm up quicker (and it looks tidier). I rolled the open end of the bag down, punched a few drainage holes in the bag and added a small layer of stones for additional drainage. A six-inch layer of compost was replaced and a couple of sprouting potatoes placed on top and covered with compost.

As the potato plants grew they were earthed up and the top of the bag unrolled a bit to give more depth. They're very thirsty plants with all that top growth to maintain as well as growing tubers underground, but they don't like boggy conditions, hence the drainage at the bottom. Anyway one day after they'd flowered (and I needed some potatoes for supper) I thought the time had come to empty one bag and see how they were doing.

There was a lot of top growth



and a fair amount of success was evident.



Okay, so the local greengrocer isn't going to lose any sleep over the threat to his business, but they were fresh, organic and delicious.

Please release me, let me go

I'm very annoyed. In fact I'm more than annoyed, I'm very very cross and fed up. Yesterday I was silly and clicked on the Friend Finder application on Farcebook. I know, I know, you should never click on anything on the right hand side, but I believed its lies about which of my friends had used it, and now all my real friends are going to get the spam emails like Ned's had in the past about how X, Y and Z are suggesting he joins Farcebook himself. Seeing that some of the invites have been from me, and I haven't sent them, I know it's all spam.

But worse than that I now can't fully sign out of Windows Live after using my email account. All the Hotmail accounts on this computer, even ones that Farcebook haven't heard of, give the same message after signing out - that it's failed to log out of the following site: h ttps://ssl.facebook. com/accept_token. php (I've put in a few spaces to try to stop it making a link). When I paste that into google I find it's been happening for years, with various suggestions of what to do to fix it. The ones that aren't too complicated for me to understand are clearing cookies (done, no effect) and contacting Windows live help (done, no answer).

Does anyone else have any ideas? I'm really not happy.

I'll bet you think this song is about you

It must be ... ooh, two or three years ago I bought an apricot whip (that's a baby tree, by the way) that was guaranteed to fruit in the second year after purchase. Duly, in its first season it grew but didn't flower. Last year it flowered, but we had late frosts and no fruit resulted. This year it had plenty of blossom



but despite my best efforts with the pollinating brush and throwing bees at it only one fruit developed. This was nurtured; the tree, still in a pot, fed and watered copiously to encourage it to ripe fruition. This baby fruit was cherished and admired, and woe betide anyone who did anything to hinder its development. It swelled satisfyingly and the heat of the past few weeks blushed its cheeks to a delicate pink.



Then yesterday it fell from the tree in its ripe perfection. It was carried indoors in triumph and reventially halved and shared. The verdict? I have never sampled any fruit so sublime. Juicy and sweet and warm, like no other apricot can ever have tasted. Perfection. :)

She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers

At last someone's pointed me in the direction of the version I really love ...

Your sweet face seems to haunt my dreams

My 'lilium regale' has excelled itself this year; so many beautiful flowers and a fabulous scent.

Hear the dogs howling out of key

And they think this is 'home', do they?



Acksherly it could be worse



What's 'caching'?



I don't know what a durdle is, and there's no sign of a door anywhere.



A castle full of maidens? Where?



I could be asleep, you know.



Where did that fat bloke go?



So that's a holiday, is it? I wonder if I'll get my 5.30 am walk tomorrow.