Easter

Easter Sunday is not a time for relaxing! Yesterday morning hubby and I hid eggs the woods for the children to find. However he had to first remove a dead bird from said woods as the youngest refused to enter the woods until the 'dead thing' had gone. She did offer to find daddy big gloves for the operation in case he got the germs!  The girls then spent a happy half hour on the hunt. However as the older one is wise to the ways of the egg hunt, she had asked me to count them, so they knew if they were all found. Anyway one still remains missing, much to the dismay of the oldest, who cannot understand why her mum cannot remember the exact location of the missing egg!!!
The afternoon was spend cutting the grass, well hubby cut while I edged and hoed off the weeds germinating under the new hedge.
The bareroot hornbeam hedge has burst into life. I have a couple of plants that had their heads chopped off by the hare, but they are coming lower down. I will see how they get on growing this season, and if necessary buy a couple to replace them over winter.

The friend came good with the leaf mold and left 8 bags for us, and lovely stuff it was too. I spread most of it around our one flower border, and it looks great. Well it did before the chickens escaped earlier today and headed straight for it. They had a good old scratch about sending the mulch in all directions. They also ripped the new leaves of an acanthus to shreds, who knew acanthus was irresistable to chickens! Luckily we noticed they had escaped before they found the new shoots in the veg bed!

Little inspection of the orchard trees and all seem to have life in them, and a couple of the apple trees have flower buds on them, so we may have a few apples this year?!

We popped up to Scotland for a few days ago and have brought back some snowdrops from the mother in law's garden. We have put them in the shrub under the large hedge that borders the garden. Currently the planting under here consists of nettles, dock, brambles and long grass.  I do not mind a 'wild' look but there are limits. Therefore over the year I am going to tackle some of the more persistant weeds here. Hubby wants daffs, snowdrops and primroses next spring, a much nicer look than the dead grass and weeds this spring!

Weather permitting today we will be pea sowing, its currently raining. I cannot see Scotland out of the window at the moment, this means the weather is set in for a while!!

March madness

Its still early on in the month, and I am still biding my time, before planting/sowing outside, as the weather can be so unpredictable. I have started off some beans, artichokes, sweetcorn, basil, & parsley in trays/pots. They are all on the window sills of the conservatory. The beans and artichokes seem to germinate almost overnight, closely followed by the basil.  I take a look every day willing the little green shoots to appear.

The grass is growing like billy oh, the cutting cannot be put off much longer. I took delivery of another lawn mower last week. Our lawn mower, according to the lawnmower repair man is for cutting nice short fine lawns and should not be used on field grass. He was very upset by the treatment we were dishing out to it last year, despite the money he was making on repairing it every five minutes. We now have a tough old rotary Honda, lets see how this one holds up. D day, or should I say M day is Saturday.  As the grass is growing now, I have given my supply of ornamental grasses a no 2 haircut. Fresh new shoots appeared the very next day.

Planted up the raspberry canes, varieties I have bought are Octavia and Glen Lyon. Hubby and I rigged up some posts and wire supports, which I was very pleased with. I was muttering away while fixing up the wires and sounded just like my Dad. I always was dads little helper when I was a kid. (Hi Pop!).
Re-potted a couple of blueberry bushes, and planted a couple of rows of strawberry plants, donated by a friend. As I was planting the strawberries, the chickies were behind me scratching them up, so their freedom has been curtailed. They are confined to their little run for the time being. I have asked a fencer to price up fencing for a decent sized run for the chickies and basic fencing around the veg plot. I feel this is essential to give the hedge time to grow, and to give some added protection for the plot, from the wind, and visiting creatures, on the hunt for a free lunch.

Veg beds warming under plastic sheeting

Must get onto planting the onion sets........