Big carrot, little carrot

There is not much going on in my garden at the moment to boast about.

For the first time ever, slugs have been eating my courgettes and they are now officially failed courgettes - although we did get a few meals out of them.

The tomato plants that I grew in trays from seed, pricked out and grew on in pots, planted out and staked and from which I had carefully removed side shoots, had dutifully begun to produce tomatoes. Then before the wretched things grew bigger than marbles, the whole crop succumbed to blight and I have just finished hoiking them all out of the mud and into the compost bin.

French beans were okay and the mange touts were not. Carrots, as you see, are variable, but on the whole I would class them as a SUCCESS.

This afternoon after work I started weeding the plot. I have decided to turn it over to flowers for next year, as for the third year running I have found vegetable growing simply too demoralising. I planted out some pyrethrum (I think) plants I grew from seed earlier in the year and I shall get Sarah Raven's book The Cutting Garden to see what she recommends. I love flowers, but buying them is so expensive, and now, apparently, generally unethical - what else is there for a girl to do, but to grow her own?