No.99, Sunday, 15th. March 2026

Yesterday afternoon was quite sunny and, for the most part, dry. On a whim that seemingly came from nowhere I managed to get some gardening done, and there is a possibility that today I might carry on from where I left off, despite not having the correct tools or footwear.

When I venture out of the bungalow it is generally to put the bins out, and for that I keep a pair of sandals by the back door that are easy to slip on. However, they are utterly useless for marsh gardening. They were caked in thick mud in seconds. Walking on a paved area became like skating on a pond. Suffice to say that after three months of more-or-less continuous rain the ground is sodden.

The task that had been playing on my mind was to attempt the impossible: to remove droves of wild garlic from my garden. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like wild garlic. I have enjoyed locally made wild garlic bread in the past. The problem is that it forms a dense mat of interconnected roots just under the ground, and it spreads inexorably. In a few years my entire garden would be wild garlic monoculture; grass and other plants smothered.

Wild garlic is almost impossible to get rid of, but that fact seems to be lost on me. I shall be out there again tugging away at the tough thick wet leaves and forking out the bulbs and as much of the matting as I can, revealing bare earth. Yesterday I uncovered a plant that had survived under the garlic mass. I wonder if I might find more later today?