While it is true that going to work and messing with plants is (thankfully) something of a labour of love, nevertheless I am now longing to have some time off and spend a full day at home.

Indeed getting my own garden into shape has been something of a battle.
As you will no doubt recall, the period from June last year until April this year was very wet and getting out into the garden was not easy with the ground often squelchy underfoot. Consequently, just as my work commitments became much heavier, my own garden was in need of a great deal of work but didn't receive it.

My driveway, which is block paved, had become a real mess with grasses and moss colonising embarrasingly large areas. The gravel area under the tree had become a sea of sycamore seedlings while there remained drifts of fallen leaves near the coal bunker, slowly decaying and becoming a home for all manner of creepy crawlies.

This was only part of the story. In the allotment, bad weather had allowed my once beautiful vegetable garden to become colonised by willow herb and ground elder.

The grass really was very, very long. Every day, it cheesed me off to see the on-going decay as I jumped in the van and drove off to Reedley to get stuck into a major tidy up there.

Quite simply, I cannot be in two places at once, despite my best endeavours and work had to be the priority as the spring gardening season progressed.

I would come home on a night, ready to enjoy an evenings relaxation, only to be faced by an awesome workload in the garden. Apart from the trail of debris left between the fridge and my youngest daughter's bedroom (an obvious place for a visit from the 'How clean is your house?' ladies) the inside of our house was at least, however, in reasonable order.

After the labours of the day both at work and in the garden, the house provided that place of sanctuary where for brief periods you could rest-a-while and recharge the batteries.

But it is the garden that is my natural habitat and I have longed to get it back to standard and sorted out so rather than dozing in the chair after the evening meal (Is that dinner or tea?...it all depends on what wifey serves up.) I can go back out-of-doors and potter around the garden. Notice I say potter and not say 'indulge in three hours of back breaking hard labour').

Thankfully, I can,at last, honestly say that while there is still plenty to do, the heavy grind is behind me.

The garden is once more a pleasant place to sit and relax rather than toil.

Don't get me wrong, there remains much to do and I will remain busy but the huge burden of work is behind me.

The driveway is pristine, the gravel clean, the patio pots replanted for summer and the hanging baskets done, the Mahonia behind our bench seat, no longer has the characteristics of a trifid.

The grass has been trimmed and ... I have got rid of the Christmas tree. Order has been restored and what remains is all the pleasurable aspects of gardening.

In the greenhouse, the tomato plants are racing up and the first trusses of fruits formed. Top quality lettuce now await picking in the salad area and neat little rows of carrots are steadily growing away in the deep beds. The blackberries are neatly tied into their straining wires.

The fruits thinned on the apple trees. The corn has started to grow. Meanwhile the strawberry plants, growing in the raised gutterings I put on the fence in the allotment look destined to deliver a bumper crop.

Mild embarrasment and frustration with the state of things in the garden has been replaced with a hint of pride. We really are getting there and just in time to enjoy the summer.

As I sit here writing these notes, I am delighted to say, I feel the amount of work at the nursery is now getting to more reasonable levels and there is the prospect soon of the odd day off.

When that happens I will be able to enjoy my garden, not with a spade in hand, but with secateurs and watering can. Trimming this and feeding that. Dead heading spent flowers. Keeping the tomatoes fed. We will start eating outside again and enjoying our little bit of paradise.

And it really has been worth it. For the first time this year, I am sitting at my lap top computer typing away not in the office, but at the table in the garden, to the sound of bird song and of water cascading into the pond. The clutter of plastic pots is gone.

The sense of decay is there no longer. This is now a garden for relaxation and enjoyment ... which is just as well!

Being at work seven days a week and so busy in the allotment you need somewhere to rest once in a while. The garden now provides that vital place of peace so I can get away from it all.

That facility is no longer available inside the house. The trail of debris between the fridge and my youngest daughter's bedroom has now become a six-lane inter-state highway of debris. I really must call that television company.

But there are even darker forces at work. With exams now behind her, my eldest daughter arrived back from university on Monday bringng back industrial quantities of laundry, her not insignificant contribution to the world ladies shoe mountain together with models which encapsulate her dreams for a complete rebuild of most of Gateshead.

The hallway of our house can now only be crossed if you carry a machete to hack your way through the jungle of clutter as you clamber over the chaos of suitcases. We may be overwhelmed. The bathroom is now a sea of bottles of lotions, creams, shampoos and stuff. Where once there was order, chaos now reigns.

Looks like I got the garden sorted just in time ... there is no hope of finding sanctuary indoors!