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!!

Sheep invasion

Start of the half term holidays, half the country is covered in snow and ice, but not here. It was a bit overcast this a.m. however the rain held off all day.

We had a mini garden invasion from four escaped sheep this morning. I glanced out of the window and there they were, happily grazing on the grass. I managed to herd them back in the field next door. They seem to have found a big gap in the hedge. There were three in the garden yesterday as well! The chickies are not impressed by these monster visitors helping themselves to their food. We will have to plug up the gaps before the whole flock arrives with lambs in tow.

We managed to plant three pear trees today. My makeshift fleece protection seems to have put the hares off, so no more damage from their munching. Our plan for the rest of the weekend is to dig over some more of the veg beds, and cover the ones already turned over with some black plastic. This should help warm up the soil a bit to give us a head start in seed sowing next month.

 I noticed in the Cumbria Life magazine, a nearby village is having a potato day, selling seed potatoes, veg seed and fruit bushes. I need some raspberry canes, so I am going to pop along next Saturday and see what I can buy. I have already bought some seed potaotes and they are happily chitting away on the window sill of my conservatory.