I have tried, I swear I have. I’ve prepped beds, weeded like my life depended on it, checked the weather forecast…frequently but I still haven’t got the plot fully planted.

I have finished putting up the supports for the peas & beans and even got peas planted out. When I went back up to put out the second lot, I noticed the first batch I’d planted out were already being attacked by naughty birds so I went to fetch my netting. That’s when I found the wasp nest.

Yes, they had made their nest in the netting box and they weren’t too chuffed about the eviction process. The organised a protest fairly quickly in fact. Not one to be deterred, I grabbed my netting, told them they were stupid for building their nest there – and ran away.

I have put some bamboo canes around the edges, at an angle to help hold the netting in place as I wanted to make sure a bird couldn’t get in and get trapped.

The plan after that visit was simple: Come back in a couple of days and sow some more carrots, then put up another row of hoops to plant out some brassicas. The weather had other ideas. Torrential downpours, strong winds – and I do mean strong and it’s been too cold for me so how could I expect my plants to like it? Plus we had another issue. The car.

Driving back from a trip to Inverness last week, a new light came on the dashboard which I hadn’t seen before and a new message to accompany it. At first, I thought it was nice of the car to want a chat, but then I realised it was behaving more like a character in a film who you like initially until you see them hacking at people with a blunt pen-knife.

Apparently I needed to check my emissions. I’ll admit, it’s not the first time I’ve been told this but it is the first time the car has told me this so I was slightly alarmed. Earlier that day, I’d wrangled the tyre pressure machine at our local Sainsburys – only to be told by the woman in the petrol kiosk that it didn’t work right and I’d be better off going to the other garage. I’m convinced they should add that as a category at the Olympics – ‘Pulling the tyre pressure gauge to the opposite side of the car’ or ‘PTPGOSC’ for short. I admit the title needs work.

When I got home, I checked my car book and found, as usual, I didn’t understand a word of it and as it was Friday evening at this point, I decided to phone the garage on Saturday morning. I did but they couldn’t book me in till Monday so I tried to put my worrying on hold. I failed.

Monday morning arrived, as it so often does and I was back on the phone to the garage. I was promised a return call, which didn’t happen so I drove up and tried the face-to-face approach. This worked better. In fact, they booked my car in for the next morning.

After doing an initial diagnosis check, a plan was devised. A further inspection was required of one part which was going to take a little longer to do so I left the car with them and walked home with Dearest Son complaining about the ‘Winter conditions’. Well, it was the start of June so nothing unusual there.

In the end, it was found that although there are a couple of things to be done, the car is still safe to drive so to say I am relieved, would be a bit on the mild side.

In an attempt to keep the positive mood going, I went round the garden looking for small wins, and I found some.

So, as you can see, the week has had it’s ups and downs but seems to have turned out just fine in the end. For that, I’m extremely thankful.

It’s so easy to let little things mount up and get on top of us, isn’t it? Small problems are just that – small. Add a few together though and we can easily feel like everything is beyond our control and nothing will ever feel ‘alright’ again. But problems do get resolved. Not always as quickly as we would like but maybe we need to find the small things we can control and focus on them.

If your week has felt ‘too much’, I hope you are able to find what you can control and find the positive in that. I hope you find small successes and let them build up, instead of problems. And I hope, you don’t find a wasp nest when you’re looking for some netting!