Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving...

The title of this post is what I have been singing in my head all of last week into this, why? Because life's pace of late has been mental, some how I have filled my time with numerous projects and if I don't sing that song in my head I might feel like I have lost the plot and throw in the towel.

But really life is good and I have my health and my family are all well and accounted for, so no more moaning, I have to JUST KEEP MOVING...

So what did I get up too last week in the garden, I will let the pictures tell the story...

Tuesday 13/04/2010

The Tulips are still enjoying the April spring sunshine.



The Hyacinths blooms are properly open.

A hybrid Wood Anemone, blooms for the first time from some free bulbs I got last year.

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On the left is Heartease which has flowers throughout out the winter into this year and has a fresh batch of blooms on it. And on the right are the first of the wild Violas in my garden to flower (its really weird, my wild violas always flower weeks later than my surrounding neighbours, who also have wild violas in their gardens).

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On the left are the blooms of the wild strawberry plants in my garden and on the right is the waterlily that lives in a deep bucket (yes I know, I know, I need to finish the big pond, hopefully this year) slowly coming to life.

Time to give the lawn it's first hair cut.

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I got quite a bit of lawn clippings so I removed some of the wood material from the compost bin which I added last week when I tidied the flower beds and layered the clippings properly with the dryer materials, resulting in a full bin.

Saw lots of mini beast while cutting the lawn.

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Picture upper left of a broken bird's egg, shows the birds are not dragging their feet re: nesting, wasp in the middle picture and a lacewing in the bottom picture, which is very encouraging to see so early in the season as their young gobble up the nasty plant sucking aphids which plague us gardeners.

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I also took a peek into the ponds again and was pleasantly surprised to see a small clump of frog spawn, aww, so the frogs hadn't turned their noses up to my filthy pond/s after all, oh bother, now I'll have to clean it without jeopardising the spawn, see what you get when you procrastinate, that teaches me, doesn't it!!!


To end the day I was lucky to find some descent parsnips to pull and some almost to far gone purple sprouting broccoli, which I baked together with the 'Celebration' winter squash from storage. The parsnips center was woody but was easily removed while preparing for the roasting pan and there was still enough root left to enjoy.

Winter Squash: Celebration

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This is a bush variety and as such doesn't take up much room when it is growing (approx the same amount of space as a courgette plant). The flesh was a little dry but this maybe due to the long time in storage. It was not overly sweet but the flesh was dense and starchy, roasted beautifully, tasted great with the other veges, I will grow again, and hope for more than one squash from the plant.

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Thursday 15/04/2010

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Another lovely sunny spring day and some tulip blooms which I accidentally cut down when I was tidying the flower beds last weekend are opening.

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The Peacock butterflies are still about.

Its time to clean the pond and above are two of the three froggy inhabitants I disturbed while doing the task. the small clump of spawn was it seems only the tip of the iceberg and there proved to be not one but two large clumps of spawn in the pond, which made cleaning the pond even trickier.

Here is the pond all cleaned of old leaves and some excess winter sludge. I choose not to change the water and simply topped up with fresh rain water from the butts, I also tidied up the plants in the boggy perimeter of all their old dead and woody foliage.

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Saturday 17/04/2010

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I worked on preparing the legume bed for sowing seeds direct, there is a trellis for peas, four wigwams; 3 for french beans and 1 for borlotto beans, and behind the wigwams on the right is a A frame for my runner beans. This was my set up last year but in another 'L' shaped bed, which worked well so I'll be repeating it this year.

To prepare the bed I dug in three buckets of well rotted compost and three buckets of well rotted spent rabbit bedding and dropping based compost. If you remember from my posting on the tidying of the flower beds , I showed you a picture of the compost bin having a huge mushroom pile in the cooked compost side. Well the pictures above are what I found when I dug into the compost, it is well laced with the fungi's 'root' system, which I hope will continue to thrive in the vege beds and lend theirselves to a beneficial root symbiosis with my vege plants, which should lead to a better uptake of water and nutrients by the vege plants, you can read up more on this sort of thing here, have you ever noticed sometimes when you pull up a weed like dandelion or even a dense growing grass that the roots and surrounding soil has a coating of white stuff, well that most likely is fungal growth in a symbiotic relationship with the plant you have just dug up. OK science lesson over, I will leave you to research the topic further if you wish.

Here are some other mini beast I saw on Saturday...

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More Ladybugs.

And I finally caught a bumblebee on camera.

Sunday 18/04/2010

Hubby wanted me to go to the cinema with him but I wanted to get some tasks done at the allotment, so I gave him a choice of helping me at the plot for a couple of hours so I could get my jobs for the day done quickly then accompany him to the cinema or go alone.

Hee! Hee! guess what he choose.

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I first got him to loosen the soil in the bed in the picture on the left which was part of a foot path and as the weather warms up and as there has been no rain in the last couple weeks the soil is starting to set like concrete. Once the soil was loosened I set to weeding while I gave him the task of digging in some manure into the bed you can see him digging pictured above which is for the brassicus.

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By golly I don't know why he won't come out in the garden or the plot more often, he got both jobs done so quickely he was even able to weed out the main central footpath.

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So with the smaller bed weeded, I watered the emerging beetroot and carrot seedlings, and we cycled back home, I would have loved to also sown the parsnip seeds but I had other tasks at home to get done before going to see the show, so I'll sow those later this week.

PS. I have updated my other blog, check it out if you would like to catch up on what else has been demanding my time.

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And I know I have been quiet on the blog reading front (but if I don't limit my computer time I won't get anything done). I will play catch up and read and comment on all my blogs I like to follow as the week progresses.

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