Easter Parade

 What lovely weather we enjoyed today! Jokes are often made about Bank Holiday weekends inviting in horrible weather, but in my part of the world we had blue skies and sunshine all day which meant - you’ve guessed it - gardening time!! 

I hadn’t planned to do gardening today. High on my list was cleaning the car, giving the kitchen the once over with a damp cloth and sorting out the tableware in the dresser. However, when it became clear it was gardening weather, out I went to crack on. 

Mr and Mrs Swallow were being most industrious. Mr Swallow returned from a few days’ absence a couple of days ago with a lady swallow in tow. He was showing off with great extravagance and loudness, shouting, ‘Look at this superior nesting accommodation!’ And I think Mrs Swallow was marginally impressed but said something along the lines of, ‘Well, it’s okay I suppose, but I want a few improvements made before I move in,’ so for the last two days they’ve been swooping in and out with beakfuls of mud and grass and bits of fluff, extending the homestead ready for the first batch of babies. It has brought me much joy watching them. They are a handsome couple. 

Anyway, I set off up the garden to tackle the first job which was the strawberry bed. This involved removing a fair amount of grass and ninja dandelions that have sprung up since I removed the lavenders. If you’ve ever attempted to detach grass from earth, then you’ll know what an arduous job this is. But I wanted to install some wooden plank edges to the bed so I can add netting at a later date to protect the fruit from being ransacked by the birds. I planted the strawberry plants and was pleased (if somewhat boiled and perspiring) with the result:

I don’t know what Nell is looking at. She has been bonkers all day and tested my patience to beyond the limit. 

Next job was to mow the orchard. This is my least favourite area to mow on account of it having lots of nooks and crannies which are difficult to wrangle the mower around. The single raised bed in the orchard is full of forget-me-nots. I didn’t put them there. I have never sowed a forget-me-not seed in my life. They just show up and spread themselves around like some sort of virulent rash. But they are pretty and they are easy to weed out once they’ve finished flowering. 

I always think, ‘Oh, it won’t take long to mow that bit of grass,’ and I am ALWAYS wrong. And then I think something stupid like, ‘Oh, whilst the mower is out, I’ll do the middle garden. It won’t take long.’ And I am wrong again. I never learn. But then I look at the mowing I have completed and there is a sense of quiet satisfaction at the neatness of it all, and that makes my stupidity worthwhile. There were quite a few butterflies of various sorts flitting about as I mowed. A few days ago, I received an email from the Butterfly Conservation Trust (I am a member) asking people to consider not mowing their grass AT ALL until September. Are they MAD? If I didn’t mow my grass at all for the next four months there is a real danger that I could fall over a lost bean cane or garden rake, vanish in the undergrowth and be eaten by ants before anyone could find me. I shall continue to mow. The butterflies in my garden seem plentiful enough. 

The plum blossom has finished, the pear blossom is hanging on, and I was taken by surprise at the sudden appearance of the apple blossom because I am pretty certain it wasn’t there yesterday. Very pretty though:

To break up the mowing malarkey, I made occasional trips into the greenhouse to study the seedlings and to water the seedlings and, at one point, to water myself by having a cup of tea. The seedlings are doing very well indeed. Here are some of the dwarf French beans, waking up from their beds and stretching out their little green arms:

There are twenty tomato plants now. I’ve given up counting the purple sprouting broccoli gang. The lupins and geraniums will need potting on soon. The lavender cuttings continue to look mighty fine. 

Big tick, gold star to today, then. I think we might be due a couple of rain showers tomorrow.