Rhubarb and Custard

The rhubarb is our current success story - the last couple of weeks of sunshine seem to have agreed with it - at any rate it's provided us with our first fruits of the year (well veg I suppose).

Harvested the first few stalks and transferred them straight to the cooking pot. Unfortunately we were a little generous with the water, and our stewed rhubarb and custard came out more like rhubarb and custard soup - it tasted nice though!

Might try making rhubarb and ginger jam next - somebody fed me some once, and I seem to remember it was rather good . . .

Bad Bunny

Cute? Maybe . . .

But there are some things I can't forgive:

Fruit and Two Veg

We've had some lovely sunny weather over the last few weeks (see future post - will link in due course) although most days have had a slight chill in the air. As such we've held off doing too much with the vegetable patches - other than digging them over a couple of times.

The soft fruit is coming along nicely though - the raspberry canes are coming up all over the place this year, and the gooseberry, blackcurrant and blueberry bushes are all in flower. The strawberries are looking healthy enough, and should provide a bumper crop in due course.

The only issue is keeping some of the local wildlife out. As you may remember something had all the blueberries last year, and there are ominous small holes indicating that mice (? or similar) are burrowing in under the base boards. Did some re-fortification works last weekend, tying down the netting in all the places that a squirrel may have found its way in . . .

Made the most of the last of the really sunny weather yesterday to finally get some planting done in the garden - notably starting to populate the two veg plots. Martin got the maincrop potatoes (Maris Piper) planted up in the smaller of the two plots (the one we had sweetcorn, courgettes, and left-over peas in last year).

I cleared out the last of the weeds and old netting from the frame in the main veg plot, and dug in some fertiliser, before planting up my onion seedlings, some of which are beginning to look like spring onions at least!

Finally, this morning, as the rain finally returned, we planted up some peas. Mindful of last year's poor showing, we're trying a new approach. Using some of the old guttering (which we replaced last year) we've planted up our first row in the garage - once this is through and sufficiently established to ensure that the birds can't do much damage we'll transplant back into the main veg plot. Hopefully this strategy will work!

Got a few more things to plant up still - the tomatoes and peppers and chillies are coming on now, but not ready for planting on yet - and we've got cucumbers and spinach and some salad veggies to plant as well as green beans. In the meantime, at least the potatoes and onions will appreciate a little rain . . .

Easter Travels

A quick retrospective on the Easter weekend. We started early (on Maundy Thursday) negotiating snowy Welsh hills, and the dreaded M6 queues, on our way to visit family in Cambridgeshire.

We soon left the snow behind, graduating to wet and windy on the Friday, and something resembling a nice day on the Saturday. Managed to fit in a couple of National Trust properties - Wimpole Hall and Anglesey Abbey - hadn't been to the former before, weather wasn't too great so didn't get to see the grounds but the house was nice.

Managed more of a walk round the grounds at Anglesey Abbey, and had been round the house before - in fact somewhere there is a very old scrapbook in which as a child I drew some of the jewelled crosses on display there.

Back home on Easter Sunday - a much nicer day, and lovely quiet roads - and when we got back, spotted the first swallow of the year swooping round the yew tree in the garden!

From Spring Flowers to Snow Showers

As we leave March behind it feels like winter is back with us. Woke up today to gales and horizontal rain. Over the course of the day we've even seen sleet and hail as well as the odd sunny spell - and there's snow on them there hills.

Before today there was definitely a feeling of Spring in the air - lambs doing there lamb racing bouncy things in the fields - things coming into bloom (one of the camellia bushes is in full flower, there are primroses out, the daffodils and crocus of course, and the promise of tulips).

The pieris in particular was attracting large numbers of bumble bees of all things:

Hopefully this is winter's final fling, and there is better weather to come . . .

Getting Growing

As Spring finally seems to be here, it's been time to get thinking about the new growing season. It's been such a cold start to the year that we're a little later getting growing - but in addition to the onions / chillis - we do have a range of seeds (tomatoes, courgettes, peppers) planted up on the windowsill awaiting germination.

The onions are doing ok, although I'm a little unconvinced about whether these spindly little seedlings will actually turn into monster onions!

A couple of weeks back we also planted up four tubs of potatoes, which are now sitting in the big greenhouse and showing the first signs of life. Otherwise we've been digging over the veg plots, and yesterday I did some weeding in the fruit cage, clearing out lots of dead strawberry leaves.

Everything is looking good there - all the fruit bushes are putting on their first leaves, and lots of new canes are coming up round last year's raspberries:

Speaking of fruit, the rhubarb is also doing very nicely thank you:

Mud Month?

Was looking for something interesting to say about February and its weather (see below), and came up with the following from Wikipedia:

Historical names for February include the Anglo-Saxon terms Solmonath (mud month) and Kale-monath (named for cabbage) as well as Charlemagne's designation Hornung. In Finnish, the month is called helmikuu, meaning "month of the pearl"; when snow melts on tree branches, it forms droplets, and as these freeze again, they are like pearls of ice. In Ukrainian, the month is called лютий meaning the month of ice or hard frost.

Actually 'mud month' is a little unfair - February really wasn't that bad - still quite cold, but generally rather sunny:

Thus far, March is continuing cold but sunny - the Green Shoots of Spring remain 'un-sprung' for the most part. St David's Day has come and gone without a daffodil to be seen - although there are signs of flowering any day now . . .