Garden photos and veggie update

The garden this year is looking good. Perhaps it's the extra long and cold winter, but the roses are really blooming and everything just looks lush and full of life.



The section of ground directly to the side of the kitchen conservatory was just a glorified plant dumping ground last year! A place to put plants that didn't have a suitable place elsewhere to grow. At the beginning of the year I thought this area would be ideal for a herb garden, but now, seeing how beautiful my "dumping ground" is, I'm tempted to have my herbs elsewhere. I had a little gap with nothing growing and some left over tomato plants, so the two seem to go very well together.



The actual veg plot is finally doing its thing. It's taken its time though with the bad start to the year and I know I'm not the only veggie grower to notice a difference with the produce this year.
This photo shows the peas (I finally managed to grow a successful second crop - took three attempts), a couple of lines of parsnips still at the very baby stage and raised bed in the background with chilli and spring onions. Both bags of free seed potatoes did well - both now harvested and thoroughly enjoyed! Also in the plot are two rows of garlic, which have been extremely disappointing (so far all very tiny), two rows each of spring onions and leeks.

Goodbye Gina

Sad news - we lost Gina, our ex-Tesco Finest hen last week. She'll be missed that's for sure. Full of cheeky character and never one to miss a fallen crumb, scooting at full pelt across the garden at the sight of the tiniest piece of biscuit!

I remember during the winter asking on one of the hen forums for some advice about her rather purple comb. The messages back weren't that promising and I was half expecting her to not survive the bitter weather. However, she was a tough little cookie and perked up once Spring came our way. Leg mites posed the next problem which I thought we'd got sorted fairly sharpish. She hadn't laid eggs for over a year and people said she was probably quite old. Well her time ran out but I was so pleased to have been able, just two days before it happened, to have that final very big cuddle before letting her loose on any fallen crumbs around the garden table.