Windowsill checklist

Light levels in the kitchen are at an all time low - not because it's cloudy (although it is) but because the paraphernalia of family life has covered every inch of my windowsills.  In particular it's the garden-related gubbins that's tipped it over the edge.

In no particular order, my windowsills are currently housing...

• 1 telephone

• 2 cress caterpillars (one shorn for sandwiches)

• 1 pot of basil - my eldest likes to garnish her Heinz tomato soup with it

• 1 Dualit radio - very shiny but easily mistaken for a toaster

• 2 Christmas-themed grass heads - inspired presents from my friend Claire but now on their last legs and possibly suffering from an unidentified turf disease

• 4 family pictures

• 30 coir pots from which various tomato plants are stubbornly refusing to emerge

• 4 cards - 2 for Easter (acceptable), 2 new baby cards (as he is now 11 months old this is less acceptable)

• 1 bag of exotic looking seeds from the Cuban botanical gardens - an original present from my mother-in-law's travels but also a possible a bio-hazard

• 1 Cuban cigar - as above but with less environmental risk

• 1 jar of spaghetti

• 1 old whisky bottle tube now containing breadsticks - this does raise a few eyebrows when I take it out and about for the children's snacks

• 12 sweet pea plants - still not planted out

• 1 amaryllis - past its best and not my favourite colour, but it was a present and, as such, gets my usual 6 month amnesty before being rehoused

• 1 bottle opener - because such a vital piece of equipment should always be close at hand

• 1 vase of Eucalyptus foliage and Queen of Night tulips cut from the garden with the children yesterday

• An old ice cream container now housing five nascent sunflowers in toilet roll inners

• Three empty yogurt pots

• And a partidge in pear tree (alright I made that last one up)

Comments

[JamesA-S]

Is this one of those tall glass spaghetti jars or an upmarket version of a tin of Alphabetti spaghetti in tomato sauce?
I have recently culled my windowsills of all 3" nails and scrupled receipts. Instead they only hold onjects that are either practical (airgun pellets and the key to the septic tank) or sentimental (pictures of my children when they were cute babies and a warthog made by me aged 7)

[Dawn Isaac]

James - I am now quite desperate to see the warthog (and in fact to locate upmarket Alphabetti Spaghetti)