On Friday I left for the garden straight from work, and as I was walking from the bus to the summerhouse I suddenly noticed something…
The woodland anemones are beginning to bloom. It’s still just a few dots of white on the forest floor, but soon it will be a veritable carpet. I will make sure to take a proper walk in the forest the next time I go up there!
I arrived in the garden just in time to have a couple of hours of daylight left to enjoy the garden before retreating inside to a warm fire and a Scottish coffee (as they say in Scotland, it’s like an Irish coffee, just with better whiskey).
I do enjoy the calm and quiet of sitting in front of a warm fire in a small wooden house with no TV, no people, no nothing. Just me, being there in the moment and feeling my mind de-clutter itself.
Mind you, that was the Friday evening. Saturday I was hi-jacked by one of the neighbours who seemed to be in a mood for sitting around a fire with a few too many beers, so that’s what we did from the afternoon into the late hours. The weather was excellent on Saturday; warm sunny spells interspersed with mild snow showers.
While I wasn’t being laddish around a fire I did get something done. The vegetable beds are now in decent shape for sowing, perhaps on Easter Monday, perhaps later. (The forecast threatens with freezing nights down to minus 5C, so I have to wait for the temperatures to rise a bit.)
I think I still want to work in a bit more compost in the vegetable beds, both to lighten the soil and to bulk up the volume a bit.
There will be peas and beans in these two beds, like there was last year, but given that a great portion of the soil has been replaced I think it will be okay. And under the beans I will try my luck with some curly kale and some kohlrabi. And marigolds, of course, for what would a vegetable garden be without marigolds?
I think this will be an all right little vegetable garden.
I’ll finish off with a small – but significant – visitor to the garden; the first ladybug sighting of the season! These little fellows are always welcome in the garden!
Great sight that ladybug…I saw our first bumble bee this weekend and we are headed for a freeze tonight…my veg garden is still alive under the row cover…hoping it can survive another freeze. I’ll have to try that scottish coffee
I do cheat a little with the Scottish coffee, though; I use the rather ordinary Ballantines, rather than one of the good single-malts the Flâneur Husband has gathered in the summer house. (It just seems a bit sinful to use a 24-years single malt for what’s essentially a hot coffee punch with whipped cream.)
I haven’t seen any bumble bees this year so far, so hopefully they’re still hibernating safely in the ground.
Fire on a cold night, fine friends, good brew, not too bad a night. The veggie beds look like they are just waiting for you to start planting. The vegetables will be happy there, especially if you bulk it up with compost. Last year, my bed (not raised like your beds, which is better I think) was almost all composted matter down to 6 inches, but I also had topsoil from the edged grass that was in the mix. The tomatoes thrived.
My raised beds are literally constructed on top of the lawn (I put the frames down, then a thick lining of newspapers to smother the grass and finally the soil), since they were created before we had the drainage installed. -And in the first year the garden flooded repeatedly and dramatically…
I think I will actually bulk the beds up with a mix of more compost and some of the soil of the Sunny Border, since this will give me room for more compost in the Sunny Border where the soil is really quite lacking in lightness.
And good thing you mentioned tomatoes; I need to get them started soon…
Sounds like a great weekend was had. I love the sound of your summerhouse being a place to escape to. My allotment is like that for me. I don’t have a shed but I have a little seat where I’ll pause for a while before I spot some weeds and then I’m off to find the hoe. It’s good to see you have ladybirds appearing ready to eat any aphids that might be around.
Well, we bought the place in order to have a place outside the city to escape to. It’s surrounded by neighbours on all sides, but at least there is space, and the fjord and the forest is only a few hundred yards away. (And I could finally have my garden!)
I’ve been noticing the ladybirds too, I seem to have quite a few pottering around my plot – I left a lot of garden debris on the beds (I didn’t have time to clear up properly before I went away for winter) and I’m wondering if that same debris of plant material gave them extra homes to live in and survive. I really must go and read up about their life cycle.
the beds are looking very smart!
I suspect I will never be a “tidy” gardener, so my garden will always be full of twigs, branches and withered leaves each winter that can provide homes for all kinds of creatures…
Also, we have piles of branches, an open compost heap and all sorts of lovely hibernation options for hedgehogs, insects and whomever else might need it. My husband thinks it looks untidy – which it does – but I love knowing there’s room for nature in that untidiness.
I’ll also never be a tidy gardener both deliberate and otherwise, I remembe reading about leaving things like Corn in situ as they are great hibernating places, and the more beneficial bugs I can encourage the better. Luckily I don’t have to look at my veggie garden every day though!
I think at the moment I have the worst that nature can throw at me of lifestock; I have mosquitoes that eat me and slugs that eat my plants. Any other animals can only help me fight those two… (We can’t get moles or such things here, fortunately, since the water table is so high.)
Jeg kom bare lige forbi.
Gode billeder.
Her blæser det meget, så det er ikke lige havevejr, så jeg nøjes med at gå en runde med mit lille kamera.
Tak for kigget.
Ha` en god dag.
Jamen tak for besøget!
Har lige gengældt det og blev glædeligt overrasket over billederne af dine lyse sussex; jeg havde en flok af dem som barn, og de er nogle smukke dyr!
You have done so much and even before the end of the snow time. I’ve added compost to a couple of beds but the others wait– I don’t garden in rain. Yes get those tomatoes started! Do you really have hedgehogs? I would love to just SEE one.
We probably have hedgehogs; I haven’t seen any, but we do have them in the area and it’s a good habitat for them, with lots of food supplies (KILLER SLUGS!!!) and more or less unkempt gardens (given that it’s a holiday home area with only a few permanent – elderly – residents).
And while SOME gardening can be done in the rain, anything to do with soil just seem pointless to do in the rain when all your efforts to create lightness will be beaten down at once.
The tomatoes have been sowed in pots in the bedroom window, but have yet to show their heads. I do hope I get at least 2-3 plants out of the 10 seeds I sowed, but I really won’t have room for much more than that in the garden.
Next weekend, that will be me, a fire, no company (husband will be staying in Barbados another month), no TV, = Bliss! Looking forward to getting out in my garden, but no veggie planting, only have 8 weeks till the return.
Barbados must be lovely, but I know from when I lived in Paris and London that no matter how lovely a place you live in, coming “home” is always a little bit special.
And solitude and a warm fire is definitely lovely, especially while it’s still chilly outside, in spite of the odd sunny day.
It must be a bit frustrating to only have 8 weeks to enjoy the garden; I hope you make the most of it – and that you will have weather to enjoy it in! Some rain, some cold and lots and lots of sunshine.