New allotment

"Melanie has recently been going through the same thing I went through in my mid-30s. She's been reassessing her life, what she's done so far, what she'd like to do and who she wants to be. And she's decided she wants to be Felicity Kendall" (my dad, Bill, in conversation)

Fair enough.

You could look at the last few weeks as a kind of premature mid-life crisis, precipitated by the TV series "It's Not Easy Being Green"http://www.itsnoteasybeinggreen.org/ The show led to some serious envy on my part, which led to a discussion with my partner, Ed, which led to some serious research about the feasibility of buying a smallholding and becoming self-sufficient.

Or you could see it as a logical and gradual progression for a couple who 20 years ago dreamed together about having a goat farm, and who have lived a hippy green (albeit fairly conventional) life ever since, recycling our sandals and knitting our own muesli etc. The only major changes we've made in the last few weeks have been that we've bought a book called "New Complete Self-sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers" by John Seymour http://tinyurl.com/feumt, and got an allotment.

Oh, and started a blog.

I'll be adding pictures of the allotment, us planting seeds, things growing, being eaten by snails, that sort of stuff. The picture I've added to this post is a sunflower we grew last year. And I'll be posting about developments in our unashamedly beardy eco tie-dyed good life. Like, if Ed starts turing into Richard Briers.