"Why not smile? You've been sad for a while."*

This morning I have been spring-cleaning my garden, making it tidy enough to invite friends round for homemade wine and fires in the chimnea, pruning shrubs to make way for the new spring growth, and having a rationalisation of my gardening equipment before I move. I have countless seed trays and pots, which seem to increase in number each year even though I use very few of them. I've also got a load of old tyres that I painted up in bright colours and then stacked up to grow potatoes and strawberries in, which are not very transportable once full of soil and plants, so I'm not going to take with me when I go.

I put a post on the classifieds site at work to see if anyone wanted my excess seed trays, pots and tyres, and a woman got in touch to say she would love to have them as her son wants to start growing vegetables. So I feel pretty happy about that, not only have I de-cluttered and made my garden more habitable, but a little boy can learn about growing vegetables!

Whilst emptying the compost out of the stacked up tyres, I discovered the very end of the yield of last year's homegrown potatoes - a variety called "smile"! They are so-called because of the little half moon markings (which you can see clearly in the photo on right hand potato) which look like a smile. There are just enough potatoes for making a portion of potato salad, one of my favourite things to make with little homegrown potatoes.

*The subject line of this post is taken from one of my favourite REM songs, "Why Not Smile", and if you have spotify, you can listen to it here: R.E.M. – Why Not Smile - Oxford American Version