Back again.

New plan - this can be my warm-up writing. I'll take photos during the day and post them when I blog - it's just about discipline.  *sigh*

5:59am - and the day is just breaking. It was quiet and quite dark when I got up at 4:30, but just as the dawn started, a little shower of rain came over. It's been weirdly cold here for the last couple of days. Odd things are happening to the garden. The zucchini is out and full of blossom, but the fruit is torring which could be too much deep sudden rain, or could be calcium deficiency in the soil. I'm going to grind up eggshells and add that - see how it goes.

I love this moment - when the light rises, and the birds go into musical frenzy. Even a grey rainy morning like this is glorious!


The temperature is 17 degrees (prediction of 22 degrees at 3:00pm), with rain expected.

6:30 am - and the rain is here! Heavy - and lots more to come by the look of it. There will be no bike-rides today.

Oh - and I just found this photo in my camera: a gift for the cubby house, from Shak and Dave.

Perfect!

Pulled garlic today -

The garlic I planted before the last trip to France. Photos soon. Just wanted to note that it came up - hoping to remember what kind it was, after coffee....

Eating broad beans, lettuce, kale. Tomatoes coming on (advanced seedlings in and starting to fruit), raspberries about to go crazy, peas and beans just about ready to pick, zucchini and squash doing nicely (the patty pans are flowering)

Nine degrees this morning -

Clear and cold and still quite windy.

Brrr

Its quite cold outside this morning. There's no frost, but a very heavy dew and when daybreak comes I'll be keen to see if it looks like we might get some rain.

I sneaked out early and pinched some herbs and tomatoes from the last poor little bushes and now they're in a pot with last seasons dried beans and some garlic and celery - I'm hoping they make a lovely baked bean dish which is great with Paul's sourdough bread.

It's Jamie Oliver's recipe - I've forgotten my old one. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I fell off my blog

(I pinched that from another blog I read today, which I thought was terrific.)

So we've just come back from a glorious few weeks in Europe (very hot summer coming up for them, I think! Sablet was like a little oven!) and winter has hit while we were gone and there's Things To Be Done in the garden, although the delicious Gardening Dave and our very kind neighbours looked after the place very well for us. This morning the garden was thick with frost which still hasn't quite burned off. The chickens appear to have gone significantly quiet egg-wise - two eggs a day since we arrived back, and Pauline said they were only laying three a day while we were gone, so one of them is shirking. I think it's the black one, because she's looking a bit headachy at the moment, so I'm going to treat them today to a rice-tuna-garlic thing with some cheese shredded in and see if that helps by infusing a little protein. I'll add some garlic, too, just for anti-everything properties.

The co-op is closed today, but tomorrow I'll hit them up for some tonic and new layer mush. For some reason these girls prefer their pellets as mush. I think they're spoiled, but what the heck.

The vegetable garden got eaten by something  while we were gone - the caulis looked like they had been doing well, but there's only bits of the new heads left. The brussels sprouts, ditto - but this will happen when you leave a place for six weeks, and anyway we were planning to put new earth in for Spring. So that won't be a problem.

That's it for the moment. Just trying to remember to use this again as a way of keeping tabs on what works and what doesn't, what needs to be done, and when.

A Thousand Ways With Beans

Anyone?

It's raining.

I'm not being critical, I'm just saying - it's raining.

Rain is good. (But let's not go all UK about it. Poor lambs - we're thinking of you. Stay safe.Keep your wellies close by.)