This English weather...

One day it's so warm that it feels like summer - then quick as a wink, it's back to winter... on the same day! Yesterday was rainy and miserable, today it's foggy but chill and dank. No wonder all the weather reports on TV try to cover all bases - something like "This week the weather could be warm when it's not freezing, it could be windy in some areas some of the time but also still at other times, there might be some scattered rain but also sunshine, so it's time to wear those shorts again, but the rain could also drop the temperature to winter levels so dont forget to take a raincoat, a big umbrella and a fur parka when you go sunbathing."

Right.

What bugs me most at the moment is that I want to do some gardening but cant. All those bulbs, seeds and plants, the two big bags of compost, the many pots and planters - all of them are piled up in the conservatory. The three rose bushes (just beginning to grow after the winter pruning) that I managed to transfer to bigger pots are probably drowning after all the rain. My daffodils (those that survived my ex-dog's determined devastation) have been beaten down practically into the ground. There was hail yesterday amid all the rain - thank you, weather god, for being so supportive of my fledgling gardening efforts!

On a positive note, though... the conservatory is looking quite nice with the old-fashioned water pump feature and some new plants. Oh, and I have a total of 12 different herbs growing in pretty pots and little planters. My favourite herb at the moment is chocolate peppermint...

Yep, chocolate peppermint the plant. I'm not a real gardener (I just potter around hoping that things will grow inspite of my efforts to help), so I just dont understand how mint leaves can taste of chocolate... I know some growing things can be grafted onto others to make a hybrid third. But chocolate isnt a growing thing. I wonder if chocolate peppermint happened naturally. Maybe the plant has been around for centuries, with the taste waiting to be discovered - waiting for human beings to invent chocolate (and, eventually, chocolate mints)... and eventually realise that Nature had created the flavour first! Who knows!