Spring things

Daylight savings just started, arriving simultaneously with lots of sunny days. Therefore, there are important things happening around here: growing vegetables, flowers and chickens. 

Vegetables

I'm growing a few flowers (more than ever, the older I get !), but mostly we focus on vegetables - our garden is actually an extension of our pantry/fridge. We think about what we want to eat, then grow it. Cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, spinach, peas, lettuce, spring onions, garlic, beans, shallots, kale and potatoes come to mind. Oooh, and strawberries.

A sunflower emerges

We're  later than last year planting our vegetable seeds, but it's as exciting as ever watching them come up. One experiment from last year that we've enthusiastically taken up is the tomaccio plants from Egmont seeds. The tomatoes were intensely sweet and delicious, and the plants were hardy, producing a LOT of fruit well into autumn. $5 for just two seeds sounds scary, but it's worth it. Only when I was sowing them at the end of August did I remember vowing to grow nothing but tomaccio this year, but by then we already had other types of tomatoes sprouted. Oh well, next year.

Flowers

I've sown Icelandic poppies, but I have ladybird poppies (red with black spots) to sow, and wildflower seeds. I've also just planted three Asiatic lily bulbs - enormous, fragrant and rather over-the-top lilies that I love having in a vase. From now on they'll be free from the garden.

Our tulips by the front door are blowing us away, rather. It is SO worth planting some bulbs each autumn!

Chickens

I've also been loving my new chickens - the others were 'spent', as they say. I brought in four fresh ones: three brown shavers and the other a half-Orpington, half-bantam something-or-other. She's a character, our Hattie - and isn't she gorgeous?

When she lays us an egg, sometimes she leaves us a token feather, in case we don't know that her distinctive creamy egg is hers. Aren't feathers beautiful?