Springtime

Springtime in our park

It is an absolutely gorgeous day here today with the sun shining, the sky a perfect blue and the birds singing in the garden!  I love Spring!  Everything is waking up from its winter sleep - lots of buds on the trees, the camelia in full bloom and tadpoles wriggling in the pond.  I seem to have more energy now as well, so I went for a run first thing - it was stunning down by the sea (unfortunately I didn't have my camera/phone to take a photo).

Afterwards I took the dog for a walk and he loved being out in the sunshine - the photo is of the park during our walk.  How lucky are we to have such a stunning place right opposite our house! 

The sunshine is supposed to be staying with us until at least the middle of next week which is great but I do hope there will be some rain at some point soon to help the crops, plants and wildlife.  What we really don't want is a hosepipe ban like the one in England.

Planting...

Ready to grow...

I am very pleased to say that I have finally got round to planting the first lot of this year's potatoes!  They'd been busy chitting on the window ledge but I decided that now was a good time to get them into their grow bags.  There are some more still chitting which I will plant in a couple of weeks.
The garlic that I planted in the far top of the raised bed is growing and little green shoots are now visible, although unfortunately not all the cloves made it.  The ones that have are now joined by a couple of rows of onions as well as another couple of rows of dwarf broad beans.  That leaves me enough space in the raised bed to plant some lettuce and similar...

The tomato seeds are in a propagator and I am waiting for these to germinate - hopefully, at least some will make it into plants and they will then go out into hanging baskets when the time is right (which probably means around May).  I am also thinking about growing peppers...we'll see!  For now there is enough going on and I still have to sort out the herb garden.  I find it all terribly exciting! ;-)