Fab Family Time And Garden Gorgeousness!

Welcome to another bright and sunny day. 

What have we been up to? Well, Saturday morning was a few indoors jobs including ordering a lime tree from my Grow Your Own mag for which I only paid the p and p. (With you on this one,Tracy.) Then I did an hour on the new veg patch whilst Jon got his fire lit, finally. We headed off to have a quick lunch in town before we took Alfie to Stage School, to do a few errands then food shopping before fetching Alf again. We ended up just having a relaxing evening. Nice.

Sunday morning we were all up and at it before breakfast; with something I needed to do in the afternoon with Alfie we had to get some jobs done first thing. 

I have been keeping in the kitchen the 'lemon tree' given to me as a seed by Dawn this time last year, and here it is now! 

It will be a while before it comes to fruit but still fab to have it, thanks again Dawn.

Jon was putting the last layer of cement on the pizza oven and then he came and helped me. I had been de-stoning, again, the new veg patch and was so close to finishing but I needed his muscle for the tree roots I could not move. He turned it all over and I kept taking out more stones and fibres. 

Finally we were ready to put in some compost we bought on Saturday along with some of my own compost which was looking really good. 

I am amazed how good the area now looks after all the work we have put into it; there are still some small-ish stones in it but I figure what if the carrots DO come out a bit wonky? What does it matter? Jon had some cement going spare so he and the boys put it around the wooden edges and pushed stones into it to create a solid frame. 

I plan on putting sweetcorn and carrots in it, as I've already said, but think I may sneak a few shallots in with the carrots to help the pests, should they come calling.

After we had had breakfast I got a few jobs done in the house and then took Alfie to his extra Stage School rehearsal. I took the time to look over my garden plans whilst having a cup of coffee or two as I waited for him.

When we got back from Aber Harry had helped Jon finish the top of the cold frame for the strawberries, they are in there, trust me,

and they were also chopping logs. I went back outside to hoe the onion and garlic areas; the recent rain brought up some of the stones and they were reasonably easy to remove so it's looking great now. I also did the same in the area that was covered by the yellow polythene so I am good to go for planting out very soon! I just have the black-covered end to do now.

Jon also helped me a great deal by digging the holes for the soft fruit we needed to get in. I will admit that our little fruit area is a bit organic in the sense that it has been planted up a bit au natural. We still hope to get at least a cooking apple tree and maybe one more.

Things may be a lttle bit close together, not top quality soil as we have to deal with stones there, too but a bit of ericaceous compost will help the blueberries at least! However I feel nature will do her stuff and all will be well; it is in the countryside where things grow wild, so that is my excuse and I'm sticking to it! Jon will build a frame around it for me soon. We finally came inside at about 4pm I think as my children needed feeding at some point!

We are SOOOO pleased how things are coming along now. I just have a few containers, grow bags and potato bags to buy so that I can properly get started and then, as Jon says, it's up to me now - the sowing and growing!

In other news Alfie had his piano prep test on Friday and got some great comments from the examiner so we have great hopes for his Grade one when it comes around.

I have asked Jon to build me a solar dehydrator. Going to give it a go as we have pretty much everything we need in the shed already so will be no real outlay - love it.

No ducks until the beginning of next month due to low numbers after the avian flu, but I have received my order of egg box stickers, cuuuute!

Ok I need to get outside now. The electricity is being turned off for a couple of hours today so a good excuse to get a lot done outside today but I do still have some indoors jobs to do so will work around the big switch off which generally covers lunch time.

Bye for now.

Lou.x