Has anyone written a thesis on the long running gardening show on BBC Radio 4?  If not, they should.  A quintessentially English programme where panel members (many with heavy regional accents mainly from “up north”)answer gardening questions from a live audience in a village or town or gardening club in an area of a large metropolis.    Even the  Ames of past and present panelists cry out “Englishness”from the late Bill Sowerbutts to Fred Loads and the more contemporary Bob Flowerdew and Ann Swithinbank.   Some time ago,  in answer to the question what is the optimum number of sheds for a garden, the wonderful reply was “the number of sheds you have plus one,”.  So it is with us but it’s not sheds but polytunnels.  We have two.  The original that was bought when we arrived at The Gables and put up by the suppliers.  Then last winter we got a smaller, flimsier tunnel to house the hens during the avian flu crisis and now we have ordered a third to put at the end of the vegetable patch.  It seems that, as with sheds, the optimum number of polytunnels is the number you have plus one.

Some of the parts of the tunnel arrived yesterday with more to follow today.