Sunday, September 09, 2012

Spring... it feels like it's been a long time coming

Finally the rain has stopped a bit. Well, it did rain yesterday, but we've had a few lovely days. It's given me a chance to do a lot in the garden, which has been totally wonderful ( if a little stiff making of the old body!)
So after a bit of hard work, it was nice this morning to just have a meander around the garden, with the camera,  and look at the signs of spring appearing.
When it's sunny like it is now, this is one of my favourite times of year. I'm not a huge fan of winter up here. It seems very long, wet and damp. I actually wish it did get freezing cold with a bit of snow!

I'm much happier when I can see signs of new life appearing everywhere.


Plum blossom

 Cherry blossom - about to burst open

Clematis, almost in bloom

Bluebells springing up everywhere

 And one of my absolute favourites... the fresias are out. As I sit here typing I can smell them!


And it's not only flowers. The asparagus season is just starting in my veggie garden. There are 5 spears almost ready for eating. Something ate the top off the first one - it looked like it could have been a mouse?? So I've covered the others as they come through and it seems to be working a treat. I LOVE asparagus.


There's some spring greens, which I actually grew this for the chooks! The garlic is also doing well, as are the Alderman peas which have been growing all winter. Oh and the potatoes are coming up beautifully too.  Apart from that I didn't plant much in the veggie garden, because I knew I was going to have to buy in some top soil or something as the beds are looking a bit low. So really, I just wanted pretty much empty beds at this time of year so it was easy to fill them up. This is a job for tomorrow or Tuesday as I need Lloyd ( who is away on a writer's course this weekend) to drive the jeep with the trailer on the back - I can drive forward with a trailer, but have never mastered reverse! It should be fun!

Oh, and my egg sign? What a raging success that's been! The eggs have been selling like hot cakes, mostly to people from our wee village which is lovely, as they could become regular customers. Already quite a few have said they'll bring the box back to be refilled, which is great. I hope they all like them. I've also met some lovely people. One old chap came to meet all the chickens with me and gave them a pat. Another lady and I swapped lemon curd recipes. It's been so nice.

So, in 4 days my lovely girls have earned enough  money to pay for their feed for the whole of this month! I had to go down to the verge this morning and rub out the "For Sale" part and change it to "sorry all sold out, more tomorrow" It felt really good!  What I've also realised is that I have to keep back some eggs for ourselves and enough to put down at The Acorn, for guests. It's getting really booked up now which is amazing. It's shaping up to be it's busiest year, ever!

All in all a lovely time of year!

9 comments:

  1. Our spring is already on the hot and muggy side of things. Send some of that rain our way as we haven't had any in a couple of months and everything's starting to look brown and crunchy! Fantastic to see the eggs selling well. What good little girls you have!

    xx Susan

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    1. I'd happily share the rain - how would you like it sending over!

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    2. Something's working as it's really cloudy here today. Not raining yet but we can live in hope.

      xx Susan

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    3. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you! We've got sun today, breezy though,

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  2. Anonymous7:34 pm

    Enjoyed your spring photos - we're just heading for autumn. Hope you get your topsoil OK and pleased to hear that The Girls are paying their way and that you're having fun meeting people :-) Jo

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    1. is it a bit sad that I'm excited about getting soil tomorrow!!xx

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  3. Go Laura, what a fantastic job you are doing! I too can go forward but the going backwards is very scary. You are a bit ahead of us here and it has been so dry I will be handwatering all the new trees today. Enjoy your lovely new soil - make sure you do a PH test on it before you get planting, I had real problems with some I got last year as it was way too acidic and needed a bit of fixing. Alison xxx

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    1. I won't even attempt to go backwards now!! But I can drive the tractor beautifully! :) Alison, how to you check how acid the soil is - is there a test kit you can buy? We've finished done trailer load and it's done half the beds. Will get another loads next weekend.

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  4. Beautiful--it's always lovely when those first signs of spring appear. I'm in denial that we're seeing signs of fall coming on here ;) Congrats on the sign doing the job--bet in some ways it's sort of nice to have the chooks earning their keep :)

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x