Vive l'oignon.

Today, Ladies and Gentlemen, and any other sentient creature that may care to drop in, I would like to announce that the first crops have gone in.

Approximately 350 onion sets, of three different varieties, are now nestled into a couple of beds waiting for the birds to pull them up again. Actually I got away with it last year, but being ever the pessimist I’m sure it’ll happen this year.

The theory goes that the little blighters think they’re worms peeping up through the soil, and pull them up in the hope of a free snack. You’d think they’d cotton on after the first few and leave the rest alone wouldn’t you, but they don’t, so I suspect there’s also an element of avian vandalism involved, or even revenge.

When I gave my wife the good news, a concerned expression crept across her face.

“And how many have you put in this year ?”, she asked, in a tone not dissimilar to that used when asking how many pints I’ve had, on my return from the pub.

“Err, only about 300”, I replied, anticipating where she was coming from. I thought leaving the odd 50 off would somehow make it sound better, it didn’t.

“So we’ll have enough to last us about three bloody years then, and that’s after we’ve used the other 200 still hung up in the garage from last year”, she said. She’s very good at mental arithmetic you see.

Of course she’s right, I did over do it last year and resolved to aim for quality rather than quantity this year on the plot. But onions are just so easy to grow, you just plonk ‘em in, replant them once or twice after the birds have been round and “Voila”! you could supply a small french town, if you had a bike and a beret.