Oxo has recovered again. After some daily crop massage, tons of yoghurt and some anti-fungal powder, she finally managed to....ahem...'move' a crop blockage a couple of days ago caused by twisted rotting grass. After what I saw she left behind in her night nest, trust me when I say you did NOT want to be a chicken in the coop that night. No wonder they all fell out of the coop at speed when I opened up that morning.
Just one week of good weather and the pace in the garden and house seems to treble. All those jobs that you store up in the back of your mind to do when it's decent weather very suddenly push to the front and demand attention as the first rays of sun break through.
The last week has seen the rotary line groaning under the weight of household textiles. I've had so many huge throws, patchwork quilts and blankets to wash over the winter, but I've had to wait as they all need a good dose of sunshine and breeze to dry off in a day otherwise they take days to dry in the house and go smelly. Big thick winter jumpers have been washed, dried and stored away while spring clothing has been hunted out of cupboards and drawers to replace them. Rugs have been taken outside and beaten up to get all the ingrained dust out of them that the hoover just doesn't touch (TIP: do not smack rug against side of house when standing downwind, otherwise you get covered in dirt and grime).
The plants picked up the pace and started growing madly, all demanding their annual fertiliser and pruning. The seeds I sowed back a few weeks ago in our unheated conservatory were crying out for repotting so all the compost bins had to be turned out for some good stuff to tuck them up in. All the veg beds dried out nicely in the sun and have been dug over ready for this year's crops to go in.
The greenhouse has been reclaimed from the chickens who have been using it as a dry, warm chickenopolis throughout the winter. The staging has been liberated from the cats who have also taken to snoozing in there of an afternoon. And if my nose doesn't deceive me, peeing in there too the filthy little lazy beasts, so liberal amounts of detergent will be sloshed around this week. It's very difficult to concentrate on Women's Hour when being nasally assaulted by that smell.
All the pathways have been weeded and swept clean, and the left over building materials and broken paving slabs near the house taken down to the kitchen garden ready for recycling. The rest of the garden is being tidied up this week.
I managed to make 3 little raised beds out of some leftover bricks laid onto the slabs and planted strawberries in the centre on. I didn't do my circular tiered bed after all - it just seemed more important to get the strawberries into something when they turned up and think about that next year.
Finally I found a new blog, one that if you aspire to a life of simplicity and frugality you will enjoy as much as I have for the last few days.
Go check out Down to Earth, the blog home of Rhonda Hetzel. It's been a while since a blog gave me such food for thought and made me realise I could be doing things differently and better, but Rhonda's has done.
And that's a post for another day.
Well look at you all spring busy and full of inspiration. It certainly is a brilliant time of year, as you say so much to do and so much happening but we wouldn't have it any other way would we.
Posted by: Jennyff | March 23, 2009 at 05:19 PM