I don’t really understand what’s going on. Everything seems to be going in slow motion. Plodding along. Sleeping.

Maybe I’m just thrown off because Easter was so early this year (got another 150 years before it comes around this early again, I think it’s safe to assume that I won’t be around), but I can’t help feeling that everything is growing at a snail’s pace this year. No, scrub that, nothing is growing. Nothing is even *germinating* yet.

I’m hideously behind schedule with all my planting and sowing - good grief, I still haven’t got the broadbeans in yet! But I just figured that with all the wind, rain and snow we’ve had recently there was no point. As I’ve said before, I’m propagator-less and the greenhouse is not heated (and currently a dayroom to 4 little brown hens) and without staging (next week though… mark my words!). So I’ve only done a tiny amount of sowing. I’ve either left the seed trays outside with the hardy stuff in them, or just got them out in our (unheated) conservatory. I keep willing the little seedling heads to pop up through the soil, but alas, nothing as yet.

Got loads of work to finish for Fri, then I’ll be down at the allotment, around the Smallest Smallholding, and tackling my other website projects for a while. Perhaps then I’ll have something actually interesting to blog about, rather than filling my posts with my plans, instead of documenting actions.

So in the meantime, I’ve provided you all with a fab pic that Rich, my other half, took recently of some lichen. Amazing when you actually look at it - no camera or photoshop trickery here!

Urgh, well - the kitchen is almost done thank goodness. For the past three days I have been able to actually see what I’m cooking, the dust is all but gone, I’m not hopping and skirting around containers and pots, and all in all, it looks pretty good. I have my kitchen back. YESsss!

I have a little bit of work to finish, and then I’ve got a very long list of things to do at the allotment and Smallest Smallholding, some of which include:

1. Putting the Early Potatoes in the ground

2. Putting in more of my Hercules, Stuttgarter Giant and Red Baron onion sets

3. Putting my tent cloche up and sowing my Gladiator parsnip seeds

4. Getting the rest of the Aquadulce Broadbeans in (better late than never)

5. Sowing my Mussleburgh and Porvite Leeks and Snowball Turnips

6. Collecting up some more loo rolls (last lot got put in the recycling by accident) to sow my Heirloom sweet pea seeds that I collected from the plants last year

7. Sow my Nantes Carrots and Golden Bell Peppers

8. Buy some wood and get Rich to build my greenhouse staging (I’ve done a very scientific diagram for him to follow)

9. Buy some wood and get the compost compartments built

10. Do a big ‘poo run’ and stick on compost.

11. More digging (and back pain, and general boredom)

12. Getting the borders sorted on one side for the flower bed.

13. Buy another passion flower to trail up the trellis to disguise the chicken wire.

14. Some general landscaping in the ‘eating area’.

15. Find pots and sow my millions of herb seeds!

I could go on but I imagine you’re starting to get bored now.

In other news - we took Yoko and Cyn to the vets. Yoko had a check up and it was decided that she’s doing fine as she is, so no need to drain her thus far. I really hope she can make it through the summer, because when she stopped laying over the Winter she shrunk back down to a ‘normal’ size.

Cynthia on the other hand, is still unwell. She tends to go in cycles of being ok for about 3 weeks, then gets a problem with her crop, as well as the lack of egg laying and swelling underneath. So we took her in, and it turns out she has a ‘mass’ inside her, just where the eggs pass down. She did a funny egg a few months ago, and we think it may be another one that’s lodged itself there and it may be ‘walled off’ like an abscess. The vet thought that she was a bit young to have a tumour, but didn’t discount it. She said that problems elsewhere can cause problems with the crop too, which is perhaps why Cyn keeps having this reoccuring sour crop problem. It always seems to clear up with the Nystatin though. So at the moment, she’s having 1ml oral baytril a day (baytril works on contact, so getting it to pass through her system is the best way to attack this ‘mass), and we’re waiting a month to see whether the mass has grown or shrunk. If it’s grown, then there’s the option of an exploratory op, and depending on what that finds, surgery. All of which carry risks of course. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the meantime, I’m trying to keep her well fed and comfortable. She’s not lethargic as such, just a little bit withdrawn and not gobbling her food. I think the sour crop is returning, so today I’m zipping up to the vet (10 miles away) to get some Avipro and see whether we should start another course of Nystatin or not. Apparently if a hen has a fungal infection, baytril can actually compound the problem so we really need to keep a close eye on her. She’s up and about, she seems happy enough outside so I’m hoping and praying that in a month we’ll not be facing a really difficult decision.

Aside from our hen troubles, we got through Easter fine, had a lovely visit from Rich’s parents, and we’re both now on a healthy eating kick. We have a wedding and my school reunion that I’m organising (am I mad?) in May, and I don’t want to look like a spotty beached whale for either event. Plus, there’s the summer, and being plump during the hot summer is not fun. I’ve got loads of gardening, smallest smallholding and allotmenteering to do, as well as swimming, so hopefully that should get me back in shape. And of course, with my kitchen back (not that it went away as such), I am looking forward to a heck of a lot of baking and cooking, especially with my own home-grown produce.

Here’s a little quickie for you from RD.com

“12 ways to become an environmentalist and increase home energy savings without changing your lazy lifestyle”

 1. Skip A Trip

2. Hire Someone To Seal Up Your House

3. Work from Home (check!)

4. Drive a Fuel-Efficient Car

5. Use Cruise Control

6. Cool Your Water Heating Bills

7. Don’t Wash the Dishes- use a dishwasher (check!)

8. Use a Laptop, Let it Nap (check!)

9. Drink Tap Water (check!)

10. Stay Married - live together (check! sort of!)

11. Consider Carbon Offsets, but Be Careful

12. Support Carbon Taxes

I woke up just an hour or so ago to a fine dusting of snow. It’s still coming down in a steady flurry, tiny criss crossing flakes that are settling everywhere. I’m sitting here on top of the world (or so it feels) on the second floor looking out across the Smallest Smallholding. My cat Mindu is curled up with me, headbutting me at every opportunity and quietly purring. The other cats are all dotted about the house curled up fast asleep. Rich is tucked up in bed quietly snoozing away. Now that I’ve come in, the birds are coming in to land in the fruit frees where the bird seed is. Like a squadron of spitfires, they circle and dive down with sweeping yet precise movements. I topped the feeders up this morning, well aware that after such a cold night and with the prospect of snow they’d need extras today. I must have counted at least 50 finches (greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches and some bramblings), as well as a collection of collared doves and woodpigeons. Our resident blackbirds tend to skirt around the edges in the hedges and trees, darting in and out of the pyracantha or coming down onto the lawned area to hoover up the sunflower hearts.

The hens are totally non-plussed with the snow. I let their ladder down this morning, only for them to come down, one by one and gather underneath the house, not wanting to venture out. With some coaxing, they formed an orderly line and marched quickly into the relative warmth and dry of the greenhouse where I’d put down extra straw yesterday evening. There are currently two summer chairs acting as makeshift covers, and they huddle underneath in the straw bedding and settle down. The greenhouse door is only just open enough so that they can get in and out, to try and keep as much warmth in as possible. They’ve got their drinking water and food in there too, so they’ll only come out to get to the nestbox in the henhouse to lay.

I left what little seeds I’ve sown outside - my Kilaxy cabbages, tendersnax carrots in pots, some broadbeans and a mystery seed tray (can’t remember what I sowed - could be tomatoes? In which case, they’re probably going to be buggered now) under the henhouse extension run, away from the mice, birds and Cynthia who likes to tip everything up in order to get a good look. My new plot is still just a third dug so far, I have not been tempted to venture outside for at least a week, as I’m rubbish with cold weather and I don’t like getting cold and damp (who does?!). The allotment has been neglected for about 2 weeks, owing in part to strong winds - it’s like a wind tunnel down there - Nannie’s return from the rehabilitation unit at the hospital, work, and redecorating the kitchen. Mum and I are resolute in our pledge to get down there ASAP and start getting things ready for planting.

I did manage to get some Hercules onion sets in - goodness knows how they’re doing to fare with this snow as I took the fleece tunnels down during the windy weather. I have 150 more sets so if they turn out to be a disappointment, it’s not a complete disaster if they don’t ‘work’ properly. My super early Radar onions are slowly making progress though, which is encouraging. I’m going to get the rest of my broadbeans in, now it seems the windy weather has all but passed I’ll get some canes up and put them straight in the ground.

I think the wee wee chitting potatoes are actually ok - which is really surprising. It seems the tubers are tougher than I first anticipated. Whether or not they’ll grow mutant potatoes as a result of their exposure to the near-radioactive quality of cat wee remains to be seen. I’m regarding it as an accidental yet quite interesting little Smallest Smallholding experiment. I’ve also got a plethora of herbs to sow - probably about 8 or 10 different types, but not sure where they’re going to go yet. I think I might have to buy some pots and then grab some of the pot holding trays from the garden centre. They pile them up at the exit and you can take as many as you need - really handy for keeping everything together and makes moving things around much easier. And of course, a great recycling initiative.

Intermission: - the snow flakes are gathering pace, and getting larger. A squadron of starlings has just arrived too. There are a few slightly resigned-looking doves and pigeons sitting in the tall tree. Hens are not venturing outside, they’re staying snuggled in the straw in the greenhouse. Bramblings are going potty around the feeders.

End of Intermission.

Yup, still got loads of sowing to do. The thing is, from my very limited experience I’ve decided that it’s best not to rush these things. On the one hand, you have the opportunity to sow, and as with my onion sets, if they fail, you can sow again. However, I think if you try and push things too early then you end up with leggy, weak seedlings that don’t do as well. I don’t use propagators, but then I can pop to the shops if I need something to eat at the mo, so I can afford to take my time. The plan is to not rely on shops (especially supermarkets), to master the art of storing veg, achieve successive planting for continuous crops etc, but at the moment I’m just concentrating on growing good sized quality vegetables. I think propagators are an exact science and I’m a) not tempted and not impressed by other family member’s attempts to use them and b) can’t afford one anyway.

Rich’s parents came to visit yesterday, and they said they’re trying to grow vegetables from the plug trays this year. Apparently Suttons are doing a special offer whereby for around £25 you receive about 175 plugs, with 20 of a different vegetable. I may have got the particulars completely wrong, but the figures I’m giving are being served up by my memory which believes itself to be accurate at this present time. I think plugs are a great way to get growing if you have limited space, facilities or have difficulty raising seeds, either because your soil is poor (Rich’s parents’ soil is chalky and stony, although they’re trying raised beds too to try and improve it) or you don’t have enough window space or a greenhouse to start everything off in. I think anything that gets and keeps people growing veggies is good, I think the more people that learn about the way things grow and the nurturing of their plants and veg will have a greater appreciation for food, its taste and where it comes from. I would love to see Primary Schools (or if you’re Bedfordshire folk, Lower and Middle Schools) investing more time in teaching children these skills, and perhaps starting them off with plug vegetables would be great. Then they could progress to growing from seed. I remember as a child at school we would have egg shells with drawn on faces, stuffed with damp tissue paper and cress seeds. That was my first experience of growing something.

Speaking of eggs, I’m not sure how all the Easter Egg hunts are going to go down today in the snow. I expect there will be a lot of excited children waking up to the snow. I’m not sure there’s going to be enough to sledge on here, but it’ll still be nice for them to wake up to it. Even better is that a lot of adults will be able to enjoy it too, being a Sunday and a bank holiday weekend. And then of course there’ll be those that will have a nice walk to Church for the Easter service. Mum is coming around a little later to deliver a little Easter present for us - she says it’s not an egg but it’s baked, so can’t wait for that. I have a lot of work to catch up on, but I’ll be snuggled up on the sofa with my cats and duvet. And next week when the snow has melted, I’m going to do another sowing session.

Happy Easter all x

Pics coming soon!