A small peak into the last few months

Many Sundays are spent these days going for lovely walks around the local fields. The ground is gradually drying, although you can see the Little Miss and Pip still manage to get covered.

Repairs have also now started on the house, these are some of the early weeks in the renovations, before the plastering began.

Then

And now...

Then...

And now...  The work still continues so watch this space....

Visitors to our bird feeding station have included these greenfinches, robins, long tailed tits and blue tits.

The commencement of swimming pool staging removal. All the weird wooden structure to the left is coming out to make space for 3 new Loganberry bushes and a new apple tree. The conifer mid right of the picture is coming out so the beehives can go in that space.

 This is going to be where my swinging chair hammock and my full length lying hammock will go... Bliss on a summer's day (as long as we get a summer this year!)

 Some gratuitous chicken pictures of them and their new feeder! We now have 10 chickens and are getting a couple more, we've got a range of brown hybrids, three bluebelle hybrids, a maran hybrid and two lavender aracaunas one of whom was our only female hatchling last spring. They lay these beautiful blue eggs. I'm thinking of some salmon favourelle as our new additions, although their laying may be less than the hybrids, they lay a beautiful shade of pink egg.

Rhubarb forcers are bringing up a beautiful early crop - can't wait!!

Crocuses in the garden...this starts a sea of purple, then will become a sea of blue in later March as the bluebells come out.

The garden this morning. We've dug out some old gooseberry bushes in the cage to make space for three more black currant bushes. The joy of being in a permanent residence now is that you can evolve with your garden. We have decided that two blueberry bushes can live in large pots and we'd be better off with more of one type of soft fruit so that we actually get sufficient yield to do something with them. Blackcurrants are not commonly found in the shops and we can make such good jam, syrup, cordial or wine with them that giving up a few gooseberry bushes that gave us a mere dozen little berries last year, is worth the sacrifice. The carpet is warming the soil for the brassicas.

This year's plans are for french beans in the raised beds, brassicas where the beans were last year, beetroot where the brassicas were last year, potatoes in 3 ltr builders buckets, carrots in bags and courgettes in the shallow bed where it can grow rampant if it chooses.