Cold winter's day and shopping... with plans for the summer garden and recipe for salad with strawberries

Buy seeds now for summer flowers and vegetables and a recipe for a nice winter salad with strawberries.

It is just about freezing today and grim so it is not a day for doing much.  Off to the supermarket and found fabulous offer at Lidl 29p each for some packets of seeds.

You don't even need a garden to grow vegetables they grow very well in pots and containers.  Potatoes in dustbins, salad in an old sink, runner beans in planter tubs with some tall canes, courgettes, carrots, peas, the possibilities are endless with a bit of imagination. You can grow in small quantities for yourself and they taste so much better than from a supermarket.

Today I bought some flowers seeds also to plant up soon in my mini greenhouse - which cost me £19 and is perfect for planting seeds up a little earlier and for overwintering non-tender plants... even to grow some lettuce in during the winter. 

At the moment I have lambs lettuce = corn salad, growing in planters, and it weathers the frost... so much nicer than those bagged salads full of chlorine ten times strong than a swimming pool and you can pull a few leaves at time.

An eminent TV chef once criticised an entrant in a cooking show for using fruit with lettuce....mmmm he is wrong... 

A few sprigs of the wonderful nutty leaf salad mixed with a dressing of red or white wine vinegar and some  Walnut or corn oil,and chopped up strawberries, mix in.... yes strawberries is fabulous. Am enjoying with some York ham and some oven cooked chips for my dinner this evening. 

I bought some beautiful cornflower seeds which will be fabulous growing in a large container as well as the garden and will make a wonderful display as a cut flower in the summer in a pretty jug.

The Sea Lavender seeds will make plants in the garden which can be subsequently dried and then used in the autumn or winter when fresh flowers are scarce and pricey.   

Just for a treat, well they were on offer I bought two boxes of delicious chocolate truffles. So whilst  I sit and do my planning for the summer garden a cup of tea and chocolate.... treat...