I am sitting happily in the garden, writing a bit, painting a card for a friend’s birthday and keeping hunger at bay with the odd snack from the garden. A couple of lovely bright peppery nasturtium flowers, the red seeds from the centre of the passion flower fruit (no don’t eat the yellow skin), a few Autumn raspberries and a ripe tomato.
I grow all these things in black buckets (costing a £1 each) filled with a third of a grow bag. So be ready with your nasturtium seeds, an Autumn Bliss raspberry, a couple of tomato plants and think about a passion flower plant for next year.
It’s OCTOBER tomorrow and I’m over weight but I am not even going to mention the word d..t! It is all a question, so I am told, of eating less and exercising more.
I already have just Greek yoghurt for breakfast at the best of times, but now biscuits, cakes or chocolate either don’t come into the house or are bought and squirreled away somewhere secret, by he who can eat them all and still stay slim! How unfair is that?
Now however my yoghurt has seeds, some dried fruit and half a banana on it to make it a
bit more substantial. I’m allowing myself one piece of bread a day spread thinly with something or other and even when we have a roast just three small pieces of potato.
Everything else I eat has to include plenty of vegetables or salad and definitely no alcohol! Water has become the drink of the moment.
Aqua aerobics is now three times a week instead if two and I’m having swimming lessons with a lovely teacher called Dora at David Lloyd. My swimming is rubbish, partly due to a serious back injury many moons ago. Dora tells me that breast stroke is bad for my back and teaches me the crawl, I’m whizzing up and down the pool in no time. 
I feel lighter already, but maybe because I’m wearing a skirt one size too small and have to hold my tummy in more or less permanently.
Time for another walk round the garden to see if I can beat the snails to the runner beans and grab another delicious nasturtium.
Ann Perrin 