Glorious mud

The highlight of last week was discovering black gold on my doorstep. I live in an apartment above a garage and I asked the landlord if I could purchase a council-subsidized compost bin and put it in his back garden. He took a look at the picture online and said he was pretty sure there already was one and so there is, round the back of the garage. It's too bad that it's been there the whole two years I've been living here and I never knew but better late than never. And what's more, I opened it up to find it half full of five year old compost, black as night. Lovely. It's now been flung merrily across my allotment.

Here's my allotment at my local community garden as it looked on this rainy February Sunday. Just a teeny bit of last year's spinach left. But wait, look a little bit closer and you'll no doubt get as excited as I did to see garlic! One, two, three garlic plants coming up. (The sticks are there to remind me there's stuff planted there.)

It's always a bit of a marvel to me when things, especially things I plant, actually grow. And to think a couple of years ago I couldn't have picked a garlic plant out of a line-up, let alone know how and when to plant it. 
Indoors, meanwhile, I am trying again to grow a plant from an avocado seed. I never like the part where you're supposed to jab toothpicks into the seed to sit it at the top of the jar, so I have fashioned a grid by taping toothpicks together and the seed sits nicely on top. 

 Now, as with all such things, I have to wait.