Weeding

It's almost the end of October and there are few flowers left in the garden - so it was a wrench to pull some of the prettiest up. They were evidence of my slack attention to the veg patch in the last few weeks: we should have eaten this broccoli a month ago, but instead I let it shoot up and open its buds to reveal these delicate yellow flowers.

I knew they had to go, so against my instincts, I grabbed hold of their stems and tugged them out of the soil. I've composted all the old bean plants too and some rather manky lettuces - as well as a mountain of thistles and couch grass - so now the veg patch is clean and tidy and ready for winter.

Tomorrow I return to my desk after a weekend off, and begin editing the story and the magazine piece I wrote last week. Editing's rather like weeding, I guess - sometimes easy, when something's obviously wrong, but often I have to brace myself to uproot things which really do look rather pretty, but just don't belong there.

Now that's a metaphor I should probably weed out. Not today though - I've done enough weeding.