Happy New Year! Writing and Allotment news.

Wishing you all wealth, health and happiness.

It's taken me three days to add the picture of River of Stones to my blog. Hopefully it won't take that long before I come up with a small stone. If you don't know about river of stones hop over to Fiona Robyn's blog and take a look. I could add a link but that would probably take me a month to work out so have a look at the blogs I follow.

I don't cope with transition well (probably something to do with my star sign) so new years eve is always torturous. Now we are in the year properly I feel fine.

I suddenly finished the first rewrite of my novel. But arghh it's only 63,000 words and a load of them are slashable. I'm not going to panic. After 6 years of producing half assembled poems I managed to finish 13 into as near as possible finished poems after attending Katherine Gallagher workshops at Torriano House. The only thing that worries me is that the poems all ended up much shorter when they were finally finished. I just hope it's different for novels.

End of the month I've got a spot reading my poetry over jazz in a pub - bit nervous as they weren't written with jazz in mind. Well it's an adventure....

The allotment has been neglected- I've not been for 3 weeks but the weather has been bad for most of that time and when it improved I got a nasty cough that required bed and films back to back (ohh it was lovely). My strawberries were terrible last year and I just let them run riot afterwards. I don't know whether to just rip them out. I keep being advised to grow them in pots but I am a lazy waterer. Any ideas? I still have some leeks and parsnips to harvest but they don't mind the cold so that's ok. I still have frozen french beans but the turn out really watery - is there a secret to freezing them that can keep them nice. They are ok in soup and stews etc.

I've ordered my seeds for spring and they have arrived. Another mother and I have been doing some gardening with the kids at school - any ideas for stuff to do in January. We've already done compost- very messy and enjoyable. Is it too late /early to sow sweetpeas or herbs?

Have a fab 2011.