And not before time

I've been busy on light duties planting out in the kitchen garden, or pottager as I like to call it, an area beside the back door that's handy for popping out to harvest herbs, leaves or a few flowers. I've planted sweet peas, dahlias, sunflowers, lettuce, courgettes, rocket and dill. The latter were the only seedlings I didn't protect with fine gravel thinking the slugs wouldn't eat such a strongly scented herb, they didn't eat it but have sheared most of the plants off at ground level, lucky I kept one or two in pots that I'll take better care of. The veg garden, further away from the house has the major crops of beans, peas etc, all doing well. The weather has been perfect for planting out, some rain, some sun, I hope that trend continues.
And the reason for all this activity and greenhouse clearing, we are off to Italy on Thursday We fly from Edinburgh to Bologna with 10 kilos of hand luggage each, another challenge for me as I need to take a wheeled case to save humping a holdall around and my empty case weighs 3.5 kilos. We are staying in our friends' house in Tuscany again and hoping to pick up two stages of the Giro d'Italia, complete with Lance, when it passes through Pistoia one day and Lucca another.
I've been to the physiotherapist this morning, she was happy with the progress I've made, suggested I get a repeat prescription of the tablets I've been taking and gradually use less of them to control the pain. So I shall be off line for about 14 days and hopefully living the flip flop life. I'll leave you with some pretty pictures of plants that are brightening up my herbaceous border they stand out like beacons amongst a sea of green.