Sunday 2 February 2014

A Calm Day at the beginning of February

After a grand selection of storms, gales and rain we had a fine day today so what did I do? I watched the geese for a while in the sunshine as they preened themselves and then cropped the grass. Then I watched the bees around their hives for a bit as clusters of them were busy round the hive entrances. .. It wasn't all gazing around though as we had hen houses to clean, repairs on greenhouse again (gales recorded at 80mph in Gwynedd yesterday), kindling to chop and the most important task for me was to sow the chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines in the propagator!!

I know the containers dont look that professional but it means I can get loads in the propagator at once.Chillies are Thai, Habanero, Palivec, Black Hungarian, Lemon Drop and early Jalapeno. Sweet peppers are Sweet Chocolate and Californian Wonder. Not forgetting Aubergine Ophelia! More seeds to sow next week. I enjoyed sending off a parcel to my seedy penpal in Germany and looking forward to what might come through my letterbox! However, I am still enjoying the fruits of previous seedy penpal treats with oca and mashua from Carl Legge being a great addition to the kitchen garden and winter salad courtesy of Bethan. A gift of seeds and plants can last for ever and can so easily be passed on to others as well.
Some of the garlic doing well. I have kept the bed free of weeds so they should do ok. We are still very well supplied with a variety of winter vegetables and stored veg so that we still havent bought any veg or salads but expecting the hungry gap in the spring! Luckily  broccoli is just beginning to spear despite the  'trunks' being a bit battered into twisted shapes by the wind.

A delightful little clump and sadly one of only two clumps of snowdrops so I must order some bulbs in the green to naturalise.

I checked through the coldframes today and found this  cheerful Hellebore.






We now have seven ducks and two geese who have made a bit of a mudbath! We are planning a new pond for them and making the current rather small pond into a wildlife pond

Some of my sweet pea plants which seem to have tolerated the gales that have passed through the greenhouse on several occasions since Christmas. I became a regular at the glaziers!   
 We are expecting a week of further gales but now all the beds some of the beds are ready for a bit of soil warming so I am bracing myself to build some industrial strength cloches next weekend!