Taking a quick break in between organising seedlings and greenhouse...
Glorious, glorious weather today - hot enough in the sun for a t-shirt. We've had all the windows and patio doors open for a blow-through, and everything smells spring-like.
It will probably snow tomorrow.
However, I've started the tomatoes for the greenhouse (Stupice, Black Russian, and a new T&M variety, Harbinger), cucumber (Burpless again, since they were so amazingly prolific last year), bell peppers, and I picked up some T&M strawberry seeds at Almondsbury, a variety called Sarian that the packaging says is excellent. We'll see. They're all sitting on the kitchen windowshelf in propagators. I've also got some companion marigolds starting in the greenhouse, and will shortly get out and repot and feed my citrus plants - two grapefruit and two clementines. Now I know what I've been doing wrong I might have more success this year!
The greenhouse will be getting a general sweep down when I go back out, and I've shovelled the molehill earth into the potato growbag - in a way I'd rather the mole made hills in the greenhouse, I don't grow anything in the soil and it stops him disturbing the roots of plants in the garden itself, and the soil he throws up is rich and fine.
My White Egret Orchids are now planted, and the Butterfly Orchid tubers have just arrived, so will make up the mix and plant them this afternoon too.
My garden is full of birds! The sparrows queue up to eat at the sunflower feeder, we have a pair of the cutest long-tailed tits who now appear to be residents and love the suet/seed filled half coconut, our resident blackbirds have started gathering nest material, our robins are feasting on the birdtable, our wren is back, and we now seem to have a chaffinch visiting regularly, along with a bird that might be a female blackcap or a garden warbler, we're not entirely sure which... It's fantastic, and the garden is full of birdsong.
[bemused] And we had a letter from Prince Charles.
Well, strictly speaking, we and around 1,699 other business concerns had a letter from him. Not sure how many readers know, but back in 2007 we (WaveWrights, that is) became part of the May Day Network, "the UK’s largest group of businesses committed to taking action on climate change". At the time there were less than 500 members, so it's great to see how it's grown! If you want to see how we qualify, check here.
It's a form letter, of course, though it does apologise for being so impersonal, thanking everyone for their efforts to make a change and announcing several new initiatives, one of which is to be a relaunched website.
For us, trying to live as sustainably as possible is so much a way of life we tend to forget about it, but it is nice to be recognised.
Right - off to see if I can get the citrus plants into productive order! Later...
Labels: birds, garden, gardening, greenhouse, May Day Network, nice things
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 3:08 pm
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