New season, new coat

As I write, I am looking out at glorious sunshine, a cloudless sky and very calm water. It's just a shame we were at the plot yesterday when it raining and hailing...

We arrived with many plans, most of which involved seeds or digging. We had been forewarned that our trusty greenhouse had not survived the serious winds, so my first job was to dig it up. The foundations were still very solidly in the ground, unfortunately the top section had been battered. However, in true green fashion, we are attempting to recycle it into a cloche for the lettuces. Thankfully, we had also seen an identical greenhouse in a shop just up the road from us, so we picked one up as it was a rather bargainacious price. It also has little shelving units, which I want to put books on but Si is insisting we use for plants. We'll wait until the winds have died down until it goes up again though. (My morning walk to the train station provides excellent opportunity to analyse the weather, and as soon as I stop arriving at work looking like Worzel Gummidge, I will know it is time to put up the greenhouse). 

Once that had been done, the whole bed was dug over, and is pretty much ready for planting. I then moved on to seedlings, which is always one of my favourite jobs. However, by this time, the sunny intervals between rain/hail showers has been reduced to only a few minutes, so it was a bit of  trial to get them in. Anyway, we now have some tomato and pepper seedlings in (basking in the sunshine on my windowsill as we speak) and plenty more awaiting a seed tray. 

Next I planted the tulip bulbs dad had brought back for us from Amsterdam. (When he first told us he had brought us a traditional gift back from Amsterdam, I was a bit concerned he had gone in a completely different direction, but it turned out it was only tulips). We got them planted in fairly easily. There was a very handy picture on the side of the box showing an empty plant pot, followed by a plant pot with tulips in, which was a great relief as we had no idea what to expect. This was a fairly uneventful process, apart from the hail storm which began halfway through meaning I had to run back and cover them up pretty quickly. 

I also gave our compost a good digging over. We now have our own personal composter (thanks to Si moving pretty quickly when they were being offered around a few visits ago). This is good, as we contribute quite a lot to the compost on the site, but the communal one is so big we very rarely seem to get anything out of it. Now we have a garage (better for saving compost in than the kitchen) we are hoping this will progress nicely. Other additions to our site include some very nice stones along the front to improve drainage, but it does also look very attractive.

During all of this, Si was mainly digging. He's doing a very good job, and a lot of the back section is much improved, there's just some grass to get up now. But that just means more compost :o) He's also put lots of sand in the section which flooded last year, to improve drainage. 

As it is such a nice day, we may head back down to the plot this afternoon, or I may decide to plant up some seedlings on the Quayside. 

That's most of our updates for now, photos to follow when Si gets home from work. Please note the new coat.

B x