Yes, the snow is beautiful, it’s fun (if, like me, you’re not a commuter) and novel.

Our white cat Lilla loves the snow. She’s a complete snow cat - I think it’s about the only time she has some sort of camouflage, so she goes potty. She bats the snow, jumps in it, runs around the perimeter of the Smallest Smallholding with a wild look in her eyes, making little chirrups and ‘brrRRRRp!’ noises. This morning after breakfast she leaped onto the roof and did the usual Snow Cat routine. Goodness knows how she doesn’t fall off (although she did once, and then just walked off as if nothing had happened, whilst I had a heart attack and almost keeled over).

But these intermittent whiteouts make it extremely difficult when you’re approaching the middle of April and trying to get as much into the ground as possible. Or you’re trying to dig. Or you’re trying to encourage things to germinate. I got my tent cloche up just in time a couple of days ago, in a bid to try and warm the soil up before I sow my parsnip seeds in directly. Good timing, Lucy. The themidrome garlic (a hardy variety, another good choice given the snow and frosts we’ve had this winter) and early Radar onions are holding their own. The Hercules onion sets I planted a while back have yet to do anything - not surprising really. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they’ve not started rotting! The cabbages are peeking through, and weren’t bothered in the slightest by the snow showers. The hens, on the other hand, were not impressed by the snow. They never are.

So in light of Daniel Corbitt’s weekly forecast, I think next week may be a bit of a damp squib too as far as the Smallest Smallholding’s vegetable growing goes. I could repot my tomatoes I suppose. Maybe stick the peppers in the airing cupboard to give them a boost. Of course there’s lots of landscaping and digging to do, but I’m crap when I’m damp and cold.

So all I can do in the meantime is lounge about and fall asleep on the sofa covered in cats. If only.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 6:20 pm and is filed under cats, veg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.