People in glass houses...grow taller?

Pictured: the greenhouse at the family home, believed to house the finest private collection of narcotics plants in the country. Mostly brought back by travellers from the Victorian period, some can be smoked directly while others are grown as food for a local variety of frog that, when licked, taste revolting but when liquidised and consumed with vodka, are delicious.

I have decided upon the purchase of a greenhouse. This is driven by a couple of things, firstly, garden centres want you to pay exorbitant prices for plants when, from what I have worked out, all you need is a seed, a greenhouse, some water, some earth and sunshine. Secondly, anything that can cut down on the number of visits I have to make to garden centres can only be a good thing.

It also means that one can grow all sorts of exotics…but sod that, I want to grow really big veg. I haven’t decided yet which way to go, but suspect I will favour early tomatoes, peppers and chillies - then all I need is a cow and I’m half way to a home grown chilli con carne.

Alternatively, I may just grow a really, really big marrow. Rumour has it that if you scratch, say, your name on it when it is small, when it grows your name gets bigger. At first I thought of etching a copy of a famous painting onto the marrow, say the Hay Wain or similar, then I had a stroke of genius. What could be better growing on an enormous marrow than the face of Jesus. The beneficial effect is that not only would my greenhouse become a shrine, allowing pilgrims to make donations as they saw fit, but I could flog it on eBay for a fortune. What self respecting christian wouldn’t want a huge marrow with the face of our lord on it. Think what a hit it would be at harvest festival.