Behold my harvest

At the beginning of this year I had visions of myself morphing into Charlie Dimmock - only with much smaller (and better restrained) breasts. Freed from the shackles of supermarket bondage, I was going to live off the land, become at one with the soil and cultivate my own crops.

Clearly this hasn't happened. My garden is once again an unruly forest that I tend to venture tentatively into perhaps once or twice a week to hang out some washing.

Occasionally, when it threatens to grow above the knee, I mow the lawn.

But apart from that, I'm afraid to report that all gardening ambitions have faltered. I'd love to come up with some fantastic excuse - such as that I've been away inoculating orphans in Africa or advising the UN on the growing unrest in Egypt. But I'm afraid not. Frankly I've just been a bit preoccupied with life in general, and haven't been arsed.

Holy Jesus!

So imagine my surprise when I went out yesterday to fetch some washing in, had a little potter up the lawn, and discovered these two bad boys nestling amongst the leaves of a long-forgotten strawberry plant.

Huge, aren't they? (said the actress to the bishop)

And what's even more impressive is that this was a strawberry plant that I cultivated myself, from a runner, last summer, in a short fit of gardening enthusiasm that lasted approximately 35 minutes.

It happened after a visit from my fab friends Catherine and Gav, who are dab hands in the garden. I seem to remember they brought me a massive homegrown squash, and then over several bottles of wine sat out on the patio Gavin imparted some of his gardening wisdom, which included propagating strawberries.

I'd bought a couple of strawberry plants earlier that spring, but they'd not done much - just shot out a load of weird long tentacles.

However, Gav pointed out that these random strawberry plant arms were actually new baby plants, and if you stick them in a pot with some compost and bed them down for the winter with straw (hence the name) then in the following spring you might have whole new plants.

I have no shortage of decent quality compost (horse poop) or straw, thanks to the gee gees, so I gave it a go.

Then totally forgot I'd given it a go, until yesterday's discovery.

Admittedly, I planted half a dozen plants (and they're growing) and only have two strawberries to show for it so far. But LOOK how big they are! And ripe! And juicy!!!!

So clearly if World War Three ever kicks off and I find myself genuinely having to sustain myself from the land because Tesco has become preoccupied by making own-brand bombs or something (Tesco Finest explosives), then as long as I can survive on a diet of a couple of strawberries every year, I'll be fine!