Up close and....

It's been glorious here today - bright sunshine, blue skies, white fluffy clouds. Naturally, as a result of this, I have been stuck in waiting for a parcel to be delivered (grrrr!) which didn't turn up (double Grrrr!) so my limit for enjoying the fabulous weather was a mooch round out pocket-handkerchief sized bit of garden. As you may remember a week or so ago we sowed our first seeds of the year - joy, some are beginning to emerge from the soil! Look!

Lettuces! And other salady type leaves. This is the planter which I scattered the crushed eggshells around the edges of to deter the pesky slugs and snails - lets hope the eggshell trick works now as I don't want to lose these little fellas to the slime-brigade. There are lots of seedlings so fingers crossed we might get a decent crop. Elsewhere there is less life to be seen....

 Cayenne Peppers and assorted tomatoes still sleeping. As it was warm enough today I opened the front of the mini-greenhouse to let some air circulate. It's done up nice and snug again overnight though - it's still getting quite chilly once the sun goes down, even if the daytimes are so springlike now. I was reading on another blog today about Other People's Herbs and it got me thinking....we have mint, savoury, oregano, rosemary, 2 mighty fine bay trees, some parsley and chives. The only thing we currently have *enough* of though to actually use is the chives.....see......

 ....that is a chive plant with a lopsided haircut. Poor thing, the parsley next door is probably goading it with "did you do that for a bet" type comments. Oh well - the parsley's turn for a dodgy trim will come. I'll want some basil, but having had little success in the past growing it from seed, I've decided to take the lead of the lovely Fay and free a supermarket concentration-camp one at some stage. That worked reasonably well last year for me, although not quite to her standard! Other than that, I seem to vaguely recall scattering some coriander seed in with the random salady type things in the trough at the top here....I guess we'll see when the seedlings start developing personalities of their own!

In the meantime, that Pulmonaria is still blooming away, and still attracting the bees.....

I *think* that this one is a Common Carder bee? There were lots of them about the plant anyway, and several Bumblebees too - which reminds me, both Ben & I have in the last couple of weeks found Bumblebees stranded in the shade on pavements and footpaths - in both cases we've been able to move them into a patch of sunlight where they can sit and "recharge their batteries" to get enough energy to take off. Poor little things.  next things to burst into flower in the garden will undoubtedly be our rather lovely tulips - we usually miss the best of their display through being away so it will be nice to actually get the benefit of them this year. The cheque for the balance of the holiday cottage got dropped into the postbox today so the clock is ticking now.....we've got several more adventures planned before then, though!

Robyn