Flight

After a fairly cool few weeks - the central heating went back on - a warm sunny day last week was the trigger for several ants' nests to fly.  It wasn't just here; apparently there were so many flying ants that day that they showed up on the weather radar.  Two separate nests on the patio swarmed that afternoon, as did some of the ants in the greenhouse; the blackbirds and sparrows were delighted, gathering them to feed to their youngsters.  They even ventured into the greenhouse to feed, though not all of them found their way out easily; the female blackbird and one of the sparrows got trapped between the glass and the dense tomato plant foliage, and some panic ensued before I could shoo them out of the door.  More ants have swarmed in there in the days since then, and the male blackbird in particular has become quite accustomed to popping in for a look.  Apart from that, there have been very few intrusions into the greenhouse this year; the only other known visitor was in the spring, when a goldfinch must have got in through an open roof vent (the door was closed) and couldn't find a way out until I opened up.  I haven't even seen a toad or frog in there this year either, though they could be hiding among the compost bags that the tomatoes are planted in.  We did have a tiny frog in the grass outside the greenhouse one day, and a very much larger toad lurking in the firewood behind the garage.

Tangled tomato plants

The tomatoes this year form quite a thick screen across that end of the greenhouse.  There are seven plants, of three varieties: 'Gardener's Delight' of course is an old favourite, though it has lost its AGM and I'm not sure it's as good as it once was, and 'Harzfeuer' I've grown successfully for a few years now, and quite like.  The third, 'Cocozelle', is also an AGM cherry tomato, and the fruits are lovely and sweet, but it makes huge growth, reaching the roof and sprawling over everything else!  The result is a total tangle, but they're fruiting well this year, and I'm not complaining, even if the visiting birds find them impenetrable.

The male blackbird, who is quite trusting of us, is still feeding at least one youngster, but he stopped singing about three weeks ago, as did the robins.  A song thrush still strikes up from time to time, but otherwise that phase of the year is past.  Visitors to the bird feeders and patio are almost entirely the regulars - sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds, starlings - especially in the past few days, when some youngsters have dropped by - robins, though less frequently, and blue tits.  The occasional woodpecker, including youngsters, comes to the peanuts and sometimes to the fatballs.  And woodpigeons, of course; Lefty is gathering sticks again, so another nest must be in progress.  The male pheasant was around for a week or so, resting up quietly in the long grass behind the fruit bushes; he and I startled each other several times when I didn't see him and accidentally got too close.  He may have started moulting, as his tail was looking rather ragged.

Also in flight the other day was the red kite; the field behind us was mown, and he was obviously in search of an easy lunch, swooping quite low.  Another, smaller, raptor was checking out the bottom of the field, either a kestrel or possibly a female sparrowhawk - I couldn't tell at that distance.

Butterfly numbers have started to pick up, gently.  I've only seen a single peacock this year (a couple of days ago); but there are plenty of large and small whites, especially around my brassicas!  Yesterday I disturbed a lovely magpie moth which was hiding among the chives - black and white with an orange body - and what I think might have been a large yellow underwing, found sheltering in some rubbish that was being moved.  I'm not good at identifying moths, but many of them are beautiful, and I ought to get to know them better.

The edible garden

During the lockdown, I’ve been able to spend more time than usual working on the garden, especially given how good (mostly) the weather has been.  June, admittedly, has been more disappointing than May – some chilly nights (and days), wind, and some heavy rain (which has refilled the pond – so much for my getting to grips with the iris) – but there has still been plenty of gardening going on.  You might not think so, given the sorry state of most of the borders and the list of jobs still not done, but one area where I have been more successful has been in the veg plot.

Lettuce 'Merveille de quatre saisons'

'Fat Lazy Blonde' (top) and 'Delicato'

An even bigger 'Fat Lazy Blonde'!

The garlic and shallots have been lifted and laid on their bed to dry off (rain permitting); they’re small, presumably because of the dry spring, but should give enough to keep me going until next summer (I still have bulbs of both in store from last year, now going rather soft).  There is plenty of salad stuff, including some excellent lettuces – ‘Little Gem’, the dark red oak-leaf ‘Delicato’, the wonderful ‘Merveille de Quatre Saisons’ and the splendidly named ‘Fat Lazy Blonde’ (‘Grosse Blonde Paresseuse’, so-called because of its size, light colour and resistance to bolting); but also rocket, oriental mustard, land cress and leaf beet.  Various brassicas are coming along, especially now that I’ve put up netting and fleece to deter the pigeons from pecking at the leaves, and there are a few beetroot and some small turnips, whose leaves have also provided some stir-fry greens.  I’ve been growing the broccoli ‘Cima di Rapa’, which is also a stir-fry greens plant, though it seems prone to running to seed; perhaps it’s one of those plants that does better if sown later in the year.  I am inclined to sow things as soon as the dates on the packet allow, thinking that I need to get ahead since this garden is on the cold side, but some seeds are better left until summer or even early autumn, to prevent them from bolting.

Another reason for not sowing too early is that tender crops, if started early in spring, can be ready for planting out, or moving into the greenhouse, when the weather is still too cold for them.  Two of my courgette plants – ‘Defender’, a new variety for me – were real whoppers well before I could risk them outdoors.  They, plus one 'Cocozelle v. Tripolis' that I enjoyed last year, and one winter squash, are now out in one of the ‘no-dig’ mulched beds, but to be honest they haven’t put on much growth since going out there, and I could have left them until a little later; the first two baby courgettes are now reaching cutting size.  The tomatoes, too, were 18 inches (45cm) tall by the time their first flowers showed colour (the point at which they have to be potted on into larger pots, which means greenhouse-time for them – and the temperatures in there were still rather low at nights for them).  It doesn’t seem to have harmed them too much; all are growing vigorously, and the cherry tomato 'Cherrola' has already produced a few tasty little toms.  The aubergines seem to have managed the low temperatures all right; this year I’m growing trusty old ‘Bonica’ but also a small-fruited variety called ‘Slim Jim’, which has lovely dark leaves.  The advice on aubergines is not to allow more than 6 fruits to ripen on any one plant, which in the past has left me thinking ‘if only’ (I’ve never got more than one usable fruit on any plant, and small ones at that); this year I experimented by pinching out the tops when they were small, and lo and behold, this year I have multiple fruits coming on most of the plants, one on each shoot.  The two red pepper plants have several fruits coming on them; they were indoors until a few days ago, but they needed to be put in much bigger pots and that meant a move to the greenhouse, where it’s now warm enough for them.  The chillies are still indoors and will probably stay there; they should also go in bigger pots, but they’re doing fine as they are, and there are only so many chillies I can cope with!

The runner and French beans were sown in situ this year, and that seems to have worked well, though it will be a while before anything edible is ready from them.  The broad beans have been a mixed bag.  I usually sow the autumn-sowing variety ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ in October, and ‘Imperial Green Longpod’ in early spring; but last autumn I had few seeds of the former left and none of the latter, and thought I would try something different.  I noticed organic ‘Aquadulce’ seeds available, and bought those, only to discover that they were ‘Aquadulce’ but not ‘Claudia’ and were for late winter sowing; in fact they haven’t done particularly well, so I may just discard the remaining seeds and revert to good old ‘Claudia’.  My first sowing of the remaining ‘Claudia’ seeds, last autumn, wasn’t successful, but I managed to get the last of the seeds to germinate later on and am leaving the pods on those plants to save seed from them.  For spring sowing I bought a variety called ‘Luz di Otono’ which can also be sown in summer for autumn cropping; I was a little unsure given its rather Iberian name and our less-than-Iberian temperatures, but the spring-sown ones have done quite well and I’ll be interested to see what happens with the autumn crop.  When the beans are finished, their bed will become home to the leeks; I had to re-sow these as some interlopers, birds or beasts, disturbed the first seedbed, but fortunately I had seed left, and germinated that successfully in a length of guttering in the greenhouse. 

The wildlife also finds our garden a plentiful source of food.  The blackbirds have been busy in the gooseberry bushes (we’ve frozen some for ourselves, and the red gooseberry bush has been covered in fleece to protect it from the birds, as has the blackcurrant bush).  The pigeons have been at the brassicas and I’ve tried to protect some of them as best I can; they also took a lot of the plum buds, leaving us with a smaller crop than usual, and have been spotted trying to take raspberries.  I noticed the other day that some of the mint, in pots by the back door, was looking a little ragged; today I spotted the culprit, a rather cheeky sparrow, flying off when I came by.  We provide enough food for the sparrows and pigeons on the patio and in the feeders, so I don’t feel too bad about shooing them off the plants!  The food on the patio has also attracted some four-legged visitors, including a large rat which hasn’t been seen since I chased it off, the occasional vole and a rather sweet little wood mouse who has appeared a few times at dusk.  And the birdlife also attracts predators in search of food; yesterday a sparrowhawk was strolling nonchalantly on the lawn (empty-taloned, fortunately). 

The flowers in the garden also provide food, in the form of nectar for butterflies; last week during the warm weather (now turned cold and windy) there were three small tortoiseshells feasting on the erysimum and sweet Williams, a large white, a holly blue and a speckled wood.  And there are plenty of bees of various sorts enjoying the blossoms (and the weeds; they seem to like the little yellow flowers of the creeping potentilla that I’ve been trying to dig out of the lawn).  For us, the flowers are more a feast for the eyes than for the stomach; the sweet Williams have been lovely (seen here in full bloom), the roses and sweet peas are gorgeous as always, and the peony has provided wonderful cut flowers, here with the dark red antirrhinums, which conveniently turn a purplish-pink in the vase, complementing the peony splendidly and making a very long-lasting vaseful.

Sweet Williams in full bloom

A vase of old roses: (L-R) 'Felicia', 'Koenigin von Daenemark', 'Mme Hardy', Alba semiplena

A vase of sweet peas

Peony 'Sarah Bernhardt' with antirrhinums

Flowers to cut

R. 'Gertrude Jekyll'

I try to have at least one vaseful of home-grown flowers in the house (except at Christmas, which somehow doesn't feel a flowery time; there's always plenty of holly and ivy indoors at that time, though).  After weeks of daffodils and then tulips, followed by aquilegias, suddenly there's a big choice of blooms available to cut.  The roses are out, for a start; and 'Gertrude Jekyll' has done better this year than I can remember.  I think I may have been pruning it too late in previous years; the roses often get left until March, but I've since read that the David Austin nursery, where 'GJ' originated, prune their plants just after New Year, so I left it alone (having missed that timeslot) this year, and it seems all the better for it.

Then there's a big patch of Sweet William in the veg plot.  They're a biennial, but these plants were sown two (or was it three?) years ago, not pricked out until much too late that year and finally ended up lined out in one of the veg beds for want of anywhere better.  They didn't flower last year, but this year they've blossomed beautifully (having shared their bed with leeks last winter and now some cabbages).  I wonder if I'd be pushing my luck if I left them there for another year?

Sweet William

Another overwinterer is the patch of antirrhinums from last summer, at least some of which have survived and are producing lovely velvety dark red flower spikes - not cut for indoors yet, but they soon will be!  I've sown some more, of a different variety, this year, though I'm not sure they will look quite as classy as these red ones.

Looking lovely, but probably not for cutting, are the sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis); a glorious billow of white and pale lavender in the garden, and gorgeous in a vase for a few days but thereafter inclined to drop their petals all over the place.  I think I'll leave them outdoors and admire the show there.  

Sweet rocket

Another plant that I don't cut, for mostly practical reasons, is the variegated iris in the pond.  It seriously needs dividing and replanting as it's taking over most of the pond surface; not that there is much surface to the pond at the moment as the very dry spring has almost completely dried it out.  The last few days have been very warm and sunny, and, although today is the start of a showery and cooler spell, I doubt if there will be enough rainfall to fill it up again this summer.  In the past I would have got out the hose and refilled it, but I've accepted that wild ponds dry out naturally and refill in autumn/winter, and I no longer bother much about it.  It could be an opportunity to get in there are divide the iris, though, without getting my feet wet!

Variegated iris in the pond

I've also started cutting the sweet peas, growing (as last year) in two pots near the back door, with a couple more on the bean poles in the veg plot (where there are, as yet, no beans to bother them).  Of the two pots, one is of 'Fragrant Skies' and one of 'White Leamington', at least in theory, although the latter pot seems to have an interloper ....  They are beautifully scented, and I'm not complaining.

Supposedly 'White Leamington'!

The peony 'Sarah Bernhardt' has also started flowering, I see; I will cut some of that in a day or two.

And there are trayfuls of seedlings ready to be planted out and provide cut flowers later in the summer!

Darling buds of May

Wisteria and euphorbia

As a very dry May draws to a close, a few warm and sunny days are being followed by a couple of duller, cooler and extremely windy ones; the "rough winds" are indeed shaking the darling buds of May.  There was a welcome downpour last night, welcome not only to the gardener who has been carrying watering cans round the garden recently but also to the plants, many of which have been blooming strongly this month as the garden gets into its stride.

It has been the best year I can remember for the wisteria; it looked great, and at its peak the scent could be detected all over the garden, even at the other side of the house.  A Euphorbia characias has seeded at its feet and has been providing complementary blooms; no scent of course, but a great attraction for visiting bees.  (What it means for the nerines, which are also growing at the base of the wisteria and which are completely swamped by the euphorbia, may be another matter.)  There are already new tendrils curling out of the wisteria; I must remember to prune them this summer, as correct pruning really makes a difference to this plant.

The cistus is also blooming well, but I'm steeling myself to remove it soon as there are all sorts of nasty weeds (couch, ground elder, self-sown cotoneasters) in there.  I've been trying to take cuttings from it so that it can be replaced (it's a fussy plant, and digging it up and replanting is not a safe option), but the strike rate hasn't been good, and I'm not sure whether the sole survivor in the cuttings pot will make it through.

This is 'Angelique' ...

... and this isn't!

This year's tulips have been a bit of a mixed bag.  As usual, I kept some of last year's bulbs to plant for this year, but it's clear that putting old bulbs in pots doesn't give good results; of the oldies, only 'Orange Emperor' turned out well, with the rest either not flowering or producing a few poor-quality blooms and unhealthy-looking leaves.  Nothing looks good with tatty leaves.  I'm discarding all of last year's bulbs, and will try some of this year's ones in the ground (if I can find a place for them!) for next year.  If they don't flower, nothing will be lost.  A few old bulbs from previous years still flower in a corner of the veg plot - mostly 'Couleur Cardinal' and a single 'Angelique' - and this proved instructive, because I also grew a bagful of new 'Angelique' bulbs in a pot.  At least these were supposed to be 'Angelique', but instead of the lovely clear pink and white I was expecting, they were an apricoty-yellow; very pretty, and I liked them, but I'm convinced they weren't 'Angelique'.  I had decided to broaden my horizons a little when buying bulbs last autumn, rather than just keeping to my old favourites, and bought some 'Artist' to try them, but I'm afraid the flowers never developed properly and they've now fallen; I wonder if they got too dry?  Interestingly, I had failed to clear out one of last year's pots and, to my surprise, up came a clutch of 'Silver Parrot' which I had planted last year but which did nothing; they did quite well this year.  Maybe I'll put 'Artist' out in the garden and see if it will do likewise next year!  The tulip highlight, though, was a potful of 'Ballerina'; I'm still unable to detect its alleged scent, but they were tall, graceful and long-lasting.  They're supposed to prove perennial in the ground; I'll give it a go.

Tulip 'Ballerina'

Other May bloomers include the aquilegias (including a few squatters in the veg plot, which I really must move this year!), the choisya, alliums, Erysimum 'Bowles' Mauve', Centaurea montana and a whole host of minor but very welcome players in the overall picture.  The first rose in bloom this year was the pink rugosa at the bottom of the garden, narrowly beating the usual winner, 'Mary Queen of Scots' (which is still too big and which I intermittently try to cut back).  The creamy-white Rosa altaica has also put on a good display, and 'Gertrude Jekyll' is just coming into flower.

The variegated dogwood (Cornus sibirica 'Variegata') is also coming into bloom.  It's a beautiful shrub in almost all seasons, and I find it difficult to be sufficiently strict with it by cutting it back, for which I'm paying the penalty.  I had intended to give it a hard prune this year but have failed to do this.  The old advice was to cut it right down in late winter, to allow it to produce the new shoots that give the lovely red winter stems, but in recent years it has been suggested that that should be left until March, or staggered across a couple of years (to give a mix of new shoots and old stems with the variegated foliage).  As a result I did nothing for a couple of years, and it has become much too big; not only does it grow long stems but, where those stems touch the ground, they take root and the result is that the plant spreads too widely.  It has swallowed two rose bushes and the peony, and was shaking hands with 'Mary Queen of Scots' across the narrow path between them.  My plan now is to try to remove most of the plant entirely, leaving a couple of the layerings as a replacement and being much stricter about their management.  I started by taking out the branches reaching across the path, thereby liberating the Rosa gallica officinalis and some of the R. 'Alfred de Dalmas' next to it, and a couple of branches that were smothering the peony (which should soon be in bloom).  I then noticed something dark in the centre of the bush and, on closer inspection, this turned out to be a very young blackbird fledgeling, the first that we'd seen this year, sitting waiting to be fed; so the dogwood got a stay of execution!  Another day .....

Homemaking

Is it really so long since I posted last?  The weather has been mostly warm and sunny (apart from a brisk and chilly easterly wind for a few days) and has encouraged me to spend time working outside rather than blogging.  The last week or so has been cooler, especially out of the sun, and this week we've had some cold winds and low temperatures by day, with very chilly nights; the wind yesterday was positively icy.  This means that I have to find homes under cover for plants that are ready to go outdoors but need warmer conditions.  There are two rather large courgette plants, too large for the windowsill, currently living on the dining room floor (by the window); I daren't put them in the greenhouse, where nighttime temperatures have been down to 6C.  A third courgette and a winter squash plant, both much smaller, have a home on the windowsill, as are the pepper and chilli plants.  There probably wouldn't be room for them in the greenhouse anyway; I'm struggling to make homes for all the plants and seedlings that are in there already.  The aubergines are hogging the best spot (I don't suppose they're enjoying the cold nights either, but needs must), the tomatoes, already nearly a metre tall, are in place on the ground and the dahlias are under the staging by night and being taken outside during the day on milder days.  Remaining space is full of seed trays, at various stages of growing on/pricking out.  The brassicas and lettuce have been turfed out into the veg plot to look after themselves; I've run out of an under-cover home for them.

The other thing I'm running out of is potting compost.  Garden centres are reopening from today, but until now I've been eking out my last bag of peat-free and making use of whatever I can lay hands on.  I found an old bag containing used compost at the back of the greenhouse, and have pressed that into service with a few handfuls of 6X fertiliser; it looked in reasonable condition, with good structure and no obvious weed contamination.   I was also reduced to scavenging compost from currently unplanted pots, again with some 6X.  The aubergines got mostly new compost, but the tomatoes (seven of them for the greenhouse, plus an eighth which is destined for an outdoor pot) are homed in what is basically a second-hand mix with fertiliser.  In milder gardens, they would grow in garden soil, and I reckon that what they've got is no worse than that; we'll see!

Outside, the wildlife is busy homemaking and raising young.  The sparrows and starlings are in their usual homes under the roof and in the leylandii hedge, there are at least two pairs of blackbirds gathering food for their nestlings and a pair of mistle thrushes nesting somewhere nearby and coming to our garden for nesting material and food.  A song thrush has been singing lustily in the trees.  Goldfinches drop by for a quick drink, a pair of nuthatches have been about, at least one marsh tit has been at the seed container and of course there are robins everywhere.  One pair of robins seemed to have a nest in the ivy very low down at the foot of the big ash tree, judging by their to-and-froing, but activity stopped about ten days ago; we hope they've decided to move to a safer place.

It's not always clear, however, just who is nesting where.  Who is using the nestbox on the summerhouse wall?  We first saw bluetits checking it out, but then a pair of great tits seemed to be taking moss in.  The bluetits have still been showing interest in it, but it is becoming clear that it's the great tits that are in residence; they're taking food in.  Then there are the eight neat little holes in the grass alongside the path leading down the garden.  I've seen both bees and wasps going down into them; mostly bees, so it's possible that the odd wasp has just been checking the holes out, but it would be interesting to know just who is living in there.  They are presumably solitary bees as there has been no mass activity.  They're not causing a problem - they probably find it nice and dry under the flagstones - and it's nice to think that they find our garden a good place to live.

Whose home?

One bird who clearly isn't much interested in homemaking is the female pheasant.  She and her gentleman pheasant have been around the garden quite a lot and are fairly tolerant of our presence.  This evening they drank together at the pond and fed a little underneath the peanut feeder, but then she beetled off to the edge of the damson thicket at the bottom of the garden, sat down on the grass and spent a few minutes squawking there while her mate strutted around a bit.  Eventually she got up and they wandered off.  A quick inspection of the area showed that she had laid, and abandoned, an egg.  In the past I've found pheasants' eggs left lying around, and this confirms what I had long suspected - that pheasants take a rather casual attitude to the nesting business.

Woodpigeons do build nests, but not very substantial ones, just a loose pile of sticks.  Our elderly lame pigeon Lefty, whose mate was killed last year and whom we've seen this spring sporadically in the company of another pigeon, does indeed seem to be in a new relationship; he has been collecting twigs.  It certainly explains his increased belligerence towards any other pigeon who approaches his territory; age has not dimmed his feistiness.  The question is, where is his new home?  There's no sign of a nest in the holly tree, which has been his favourite place; presumably his new lady has ideas of her own as to where their home should be!

To dispose of a pigeon

"It's not against any religion // To want to dispose of a pigeon" sang Tom Lehrer in "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park".  Let's leave aside the accuracy of that statement (I'm pretty sure it's against the tenets of Buddhism, and I think quite a few Christians and adherents of some other faiths would have a problem with avicide other than in the cause of providing a meal).  I'm mostly happy for pigeons to visit my garden, with the occasional exception of when they peck at the vegetables or the plum buds (in which case we shoo them off, rather than poison them).  But when I have a dead bird on my hands, I do like to dispose of it decently.

Shallow grave

Down between the doronicums and the daffodils was a neat, low mound of soil, with the wing of a woodpigeon showing through at the top.  The two thoughts that came to mind, almost simultaneously, were: 1) who put that there? and 2) how much of the pigeon is attached to the wing?  (The answer to the second question proved to be - all of it.)  I would guess that it was buried by a fox; foxes will occasionally bury their prey, with the intention of coming back for it another day.  I remember one day not long after we moved here when, digging in a flowerbed, I unearthed the perfectly preserved head of a cock pheasant (no sign of the rest of the bird); it was a bit of a Godfather moment, albeit with a different sort of head and a different sort of bed.  Burying a pigeon, as I've noted on this blog previously, isn't easily done in this garden, and the fox had not selected the deepest soil for the purpose, with the poor bird really only three-quarters covered.  What surprised me was how neatly the fox had done it; I would have expected to see signs of scraping and other soil disturbance all around but no, nothing of the sort.  Fortunately that bed is in need of renovation and serious weeding, and no plants had been disturbed.

So - the old problem of where to bury a pigeon (properly).  Last year we had a short length of fence installed behind the summerhouse, and when the holes for the supports were dug I was surprised how deep the soil was there.  I hadn't seen a hole that deep in this garden since we hired a mini-JCB to excavate the pond.  Not having a JCB or even a particularly sharp spade to hand, I could only manage to get down about 25cm or so, but it was enough to give the pigeon a more appropriate burial; and I put a couple of bricks on top, just in case the fox returned and wanted to dig up its supper.

Meanwhile the plum tree is blooming nicely, with not too much pigeon damage so far!

A sign of spring

One sign of spring

Ask people how they know that spring has arrived and you would probably get a mixed bag of answers - warmer weather, primroses and daffodils flowering, birdsong, nesting activity, bees and butterflies appearing.  We've got all of that, but the other day another, less obviously welcome, sign of spring appeared: a small bit of poo on the lawn.  Thin, longish, dark and shiny.  We've had a hedgehog in the garden; and he (or she, or they) has been here and left a little deposit every night since.  I hope he or she is finding and eating the slugs.

Tulip 'Orange Emperor'

The weather has been windy, but getting warmer, and it's very pleasant in the sun; no need of a jacket for gardening, and the rest of the full winter gardening kit is being gradually discarded.  The first of the tulips are out: 'Orange Emperor' was the first, followed by 'White Valley', both of them replanted from last year but producing some welcome flowers.  The crocuses have gone and the early daffodils are fading, but other bulbs, such as the little pot of Pushkinia libanotica and the Muscari latifolia, are looking good and cheering up the patio and terrace areas, while the bigger daffs are still providing most of the colour elsewhere.  The two osmanthus are in bloom, and the first plum blossom is starting.  Meanwhile in the greenhouse, the dahlias have been dusted down, the rotten bits thrown out and the good tubers all planted up; and the first lettuce seedlings pricked out into modules to grow on in the cold frame.

Pushkinia libanotica

Pointy sticks!

I've been sowing the first spring seeds - the brassicas in the cold frame, and some other crops (salads mostly, but also leeks, turnips and beetroot) out in the veg patch.  This year I've drawn up a rough planting plan of what should go where, although I still find it difficult to envisage what crops will be out of the ground in time for the next crop to go in; I hope I've left enough space between the salads for the brassicas (sown in the cold frame) to be planted out, although some of the salads will (I hope) have grown and been eaten by then.  The plan seems to be working so far.  To protect the seedbed areas from dustbathing sparrows, wallowing partridges and dogs and cats wanting to use them as a litter tray, I've pushed in twiggy prunings from the buddleja, the idea being that wandering creatures will think twice before poking the more tender parts of their anatomy into a space with so many pointy sticks; I did this over the winter with one or two of the mulched beds and it seems to have been successful.  It may not be very decorative, but it's worth doing if it helps my seeds to come up undisturbed!

Despite the un-decorative sticks, the veg patch is looking rather tidier than in the past.  The long beds abutting the lawn have been edged with the spade and a shallow trough created to discourage the creeping grasses from trespassing, and - except for one section which needs heavy-duty weeding - look quite neat.  Most of the antirrhinums which were planted out there last year have survived the winter, so I've tidied them up a bit and look forward to seeing what they do this year.  The

Alkanet

black polythene covering the two 'no-dig' mulched beds was blown around by the winds so has been put back together again; underneath there is some couch grass trying to come through (and a lot of red ants, and a little stash - a mouse's? - of nibbled hazel shells), but I think I should be able to put courgettes and squashes in there this year through the polythene, slug activity permitting.  The paths between the veg beds, while not entirely weed-free, look rather better than in the past, and I'm trying to keep on top of that; for the moment I've reprieved the large, self-sown alkanet plant in one of the paths as the blue flowers are pretty and the bees seem to enjoy them, although the moment it looks like setting seed it will be pulled up as far as possible (the roots are immoveable).