BEST SUMMER IN 100 YEARS

For the last two months I've been tending and cultivating vegetables from a garden. Which consist of 5 terraces about 30 ft each in length of which the previous owners neglected and allowed the beds to slip into an over-grown declivity.

Thanks to a glorious summer, this garden of mine has yielded; peas, and over-grown mange-tout madness maze, lettuce spry and turgid enough to make a green grocer wilt and enough spuds to supply a McDonalds. My strawberries never make it to the table, and soon they'll be onions, and globe carrots, and more lettuce, red this time.  Don't ask about my cabbages because they lay in ruin and the sizable slug cemetery nearby proves it so, and a devil of a butterfly who won't quit laying her ravenous spawn in the up-turned palms of the great and green leaves. Speaking of green, my thumb pales in comparison to my dirty fingernails.

But I must have done something right because a toad has moved into the vicinity and went to work on the slugs like a ravenous grave-digger.  But in truth, my toad sat there and refused my live offering like a child turning down a plate of brussel sprouts.  But toads are good for gardens, they say, and I hope he stays.  It's been hard work and it hasn't been until now, writing all this, that how fun, inspiring, and therapeutic this exercise has been for me.

And still, the miserable Brits are complaining about the heat wave.