Dear Reader(s), the Damson Cottage swallow contingent have surpassed themselves this year with a new batch record of SIX eggs! This photo was taken this morning.
Usually, they produce batches of four or five eggs; we’ve never had a six before. It is quite thrilling! Last year the babies arrived on 31st May and they look like being on track for the same arrival time this year.
Today is Lord Malarkey’s birthday. I bought him a collection of ‘stuff’ to add to his expanding stop-frame animation hobby, a new rucksack as his old one was falling to pieces, a witty T-shirt, and a metal detector which he has already been up the garden with and discovered two metal bottle caps and a selection of nails. It’s a start. Next time he will find a treasure trove of gold and some very rare Saxon jewellery, of this I am quite certain. I’ve made a chocolate and strawberry birthday cake (with candles) and Heather and Oli are hosting a magnificent curry birthday lunch, so we’ll be scooting off to theirs soon for larks and merry-making.
The weather continues fine and I am already planning gardening activities for the coming week which will mostly involve planting out greenhouse seedlings like the sweet peas, courgettes and the French beans, and sowing seeds direct, like beetroot, annual herbs, chard, salad leaves and more beans. This will make room in the greenhouse for potting on the tomatoes in a couple of weeks’ time, and rigging up some fancy climbing structure for the cucumbers because when I last grew cucumbers I let them ramble around all over the place which was fine but not very tidy. And one thing I have learnt this year is that I prefer to be a tidy gardener. I’ve been reading about growing melons, which I fancy to have a go at but I may need another greenhouse if this is to happen. As a gardener, you soon come to realise that however big your greenhouse is, it’s never quite big enough.
It’s Full Moon - the Flower Moon - in Scorpio today, so I am in introspective mood. There’s a sense of something in the air and not just a whiff of the slurry spreading that’s been going on in the next field but one.
Comments
KJ
However, I do sympathise re: cutting back shrubbery. Nature is VERY resilient. I marvel every year how I can prune back my collection of roses in October to less than a foot high and six months later they are all between 4 - 6 feet tall and full of buds!
KJ