Easter

The allotment site is bursting with activity, think the sun has brought them all out ... but no sign yet of my phantom lottie neighbour.

Things are really starting to progress - on closer inspection of the broadbean bed, I can now see that the resown beans are just pushing their way through the surface. This is good because I thought the mice had eaten them all again, but it's bad because in despair I decided to resow at home ... so now I have about 25 surplus beans ...

This photo was taken a couple of days ago and today the flowers have all opened !! I also appear to have had a visit from a bean weevil as the leaves are now all nibbled around the edges.

The forget-me-nots have turned blue ! I knew I was not imagining things

Finally we have found some stone to edge the pond with - it's going to look great when it's been bedded in.

The frogspawn has now developed into tadpoles - I look to have two different types: one is a very bright red-brown, with an obvious head / tail, and the other is a drabber brown, with a thicker tail and less obvious head. I'd like to think that the latter are newts, but it's probably a different frog.

Need to get the pond area finished before they turn into frogs and start hopping around.

The potting shed is bursting at the seams - I've got quite a nice turn over of plants / seeds now. I've been hardening off the hispi cabbages and today they were planted out under a fruit net cloche to keep the dratted pigeons away. The cauliflowers will go out soon hopefully, followed by the sunflowers. That should give a bit more room for my squash / pumpkins.

I know that I was only going to grow two courgettes this year, but I've ended up sowing eight (!) BECAUSE I'm growing the tri-colour balls this year, but you can't tell which are which, so I've had to sow the contents of the packet and will have to nurture them until I can tell them apart, but I am not, I repeat NOT, keeping them all.

The apline strawberries have just started to flower again

Here's my latest project:
it's been filled with 80l of multi-purpose compost, 75l of river sand and 25l of John Innes No. 1. It is currently covered with a large piece of plastic and has 7 different varieties of carrots (although I was a little heavy handed with the watering can and suspect that my nice sections have all merged)

Violas enjoying the sunshine along with the rest of us:

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