As I gaze out from the kitchen window across to the newly mown orchard with the chickens wandering about scratching and pecking, I can’t help but be overcome, albeit very briefly, with a warm glowing sense of achievement and happiness. What a beautiful sight. It’s a sunny day and everything is looking good. 

It’s still sometimes hard to believe that all this is ours. I’ve somehow forgotten the 5 years of stress, anxiety, blood, stitches and pain. I’m very pleased that it is all over – more or less!  There is the beautiful new pottery shed in all its fire resistant glory, with its sandstock brick facade, re-cycled iron cladding, and fire-fighting spray system on the wall facing West, all newly risen from the ashes like a Phoenix, (yet again) and in the distance, the repaired and partially re-built functional barn. It has all come together now. We are almost finished with the rebuilding work. There will always be more to do, but the list all fits on one page now. In recent memory, it was so long that I didn’t even want to think about it. I was just plodding along day by day, completely focussed, dealing with the most pressing emergency repair/replace/removal jobs.

Isn’t it amazing how a little bit of balmy weather and some flowers can lift your spirits. This past weekend was glorious. We have just come out from 2 weeks of wet and drizzly weather with intermittent torrential down pours. Which filled all the dams, and we are warned of another week of rain coming in the forecasts. Winter is coming to an end and I can sense it in the colour of the grass brightening, greening and starting to regrow. Hence the recent mowing of the orchards. I spent the weekend in the vegetable garden, which was looking somewhat neglected and dowdy. But the sudden appearance of bright sunshine and warm weather made me want to get out there and get stuck into some serious weeding, strimming and composting. Lunch was a bowl of nourishingly warm miso soup and a bowl of silken tofu, served with diced ginger root, garlic, green onion and dressed with a little soy sauce.

I managed to fill 5 or 7  wheelbarrow loads of pulled weeds on Saturday, such a lot of bending and time spent down on my knees trowling, forking and winkling out the more stubborn woody weeds. Although I ached afterwards from the effort, it was so rewarding that I was straight back into it again on Sunday. After mulching the freshly weeded beds, I planted out seeds and some seedlings. Lettuce, rocket, beetroot, fennel, chard, spinach and celery. All things that are cold tolerant and wont mind if the coming cold spell reaches down to zero overnight. The seeds will still germinate in the coming warm weather. 

I won’t be planting out tomatoes for another few weeks, maybe this time next month? and even then I may have to cover them with some clear plastic as a sort of temporary closh for the first few weeks. I do this each spring as a way of getting an early tomato before Xmas. Last year I did the planting and then left for my work in Korea. So I wasn’t home to cover them when the cold snap came and frosted them off. Janine, who had stayed home, dutifully went out to the nursery/garden centre and bought some more punnets to get things going again.

Tomato seeds can be planted into punnets or trays, in a warm sheltered spot in late June or July, or even now, so that they are big enough to replant in mid to late September. Speaking of tomatoes reminds me to mention that although I had written about picking the last of the tomatoes last month. I showed a picture of 3 green tomatoes and a few red ones, well, the red ones tasted great and those 3 green ones did eventually ripen in the kitchen and we cooked them up with our morning eggs for breakfast last week. BUT, Amazingly, while weeding, I found a stray, self-sown, tomato plant that had survived under a dense cover of fennel. So we now have the last ripe tomato picked in Mid August. That has to be a record for us!

The first asparagus spears have started to appear, so our cooked breakfasts will start to take on more variety. We also have a few bright red Flanders poppies starting to flower. There are a multitude of wild, self-sown, poppy plants all through the garden beds. I planted them once, way back in the 70’s, because I like them so much. They are so bright and cheerful. I’m not so keen on the big blousy doubles. I just love the intensity of the single red.

Janine has decided that she doesn’t want the youngberry canes growing where they are anymore. They’ve been there since the 70’s, and have gone a bit feral in recent years. So I have started the process of digging them out and transplanting them over into the vegetable garden, where they will be under permanent netting. Where they are now requires us to build a plastic polypipe hoop structures over them each summer and drape netting over that to keep the birds out. It should be easier to maintain them in there. There was also an issue of rogue seeds falling and germinating in among the cane patch, some of these germinated and grew up into spiky/prickly versions of their former selves. So a total clean out is in order. I’m being very careful to only select the ‘bald’ canes for transplanting. I have chosen to place them right at the end of the bed for easy access and continuing maintenance. I will create a second cane patch at the end of the parallel bed when I get the time. Maybe next week? During the cold days I will be spending more time indoors in the pottery preparing for the next wood firing.

Today the weather has turned cold. The wind has a bitter finger-chilling edge to it.  Suddenly, I have no further interest in getting out there and finishing off the weeding. There is still so much to do out there, but I’m very content with what I got done over that glorious weekend of still, warm sunshine. Promise of the warmer weather to come. Roll on spring.