Mid-May 2013 when will spring arrive??

Well, yesterday it was almost spring-like!  

We put a temporary roof of plastic over the strawberry bed, as we lost our entire crop last year when it rained incessantly (seriously! we had exactly two that ripened, the rest rotted before ripeneing). We were just in time, as it has rained all day today. Hope it works this time. The raspberries in the fruit cage behind are going mad, as is the rhubarb. Time to make rhubarb and ginger jam!!

Pete got Bessie the tractor to start on only the second try (bless her, she's nearly as old as me!). 

He got the strip of grass above the main field cut, and then he cut the top field where our neighbour Yvon had harrowed and re-seeded it after the chaos of leylandii cutting last year. The new beech hedge (in front of where the leylandii grew) is leafing-up nicely...

The apple trees are blossoming their hearts out! The pear trees have also blossomed well this year, as have the cherries.

 I just adore apple blossom!  This is Lord Derby - such a tasty cooking apple.
The hawthorn is starting to blossom...

...as is the rowan

 and here are the first flowers on our new quince tree - for all the world like small pink roses!

New lambs and a late Christmas present

Patsy had her twin lambs late on monday night - two nice big lambs, one male and one female.  

It took her a while to count up to two, so we had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn't wander off, up the field, with only one.  They are thriving nicely.

Eddie had her two this morning, although they are more like one-and-a-half! They are both male, but one is almost twice the size of the other. I am contemplating calling them Majuscule et Minuscule.

Inevitably she chose a morning when Pete had to leave at sparrow-fart to teach in Guingamp, so I passed a fraught 30 minutes trying to get Minuscule to feed. He was just sprawled out and unable to stand on his own, while Majuscule was getting on with his breakfast, no problem.  I had to resort to holding Eddie between my knees and then aiming a pathetic little lamb towards her udder. As I was wearing my work clothes I then arrived at work, late, reeking of sheep! Eau de Ewe...

Its hard to see the difference in their sizes from these pictures. However, the little one makes enough noise for two and seems to be trying to feed on a semi-permanent basis. Eddie also cannot count to two, so we are keeping them together, under cover, for a while till she gets the measure of them.


Below is the quaich I made as a Christmas present for our youngest son Greg and his partner Alice. This is made of holly, but it had to be dyed, as it went such a nasty greeny-grey after I had carved it, so it has become a very late present.  No prizes for guessing where I copied the shape from (but heres a link for those who don't immediately know:  robin wood quaich)

I dyed it using walnut husks and am eventually quite pleased with it. One day I hope to be able to turn these on a pole-lathe, but for now, this one was just carved.

feels like spring - waiting for lambs

At last the sun has emerged from behind the thick grey wet clouds that have poured water on us all winter and most of last summer and autumn. The ground is still wet, but no longer feels like it will engulf the unwary foot or even leg...

In fact, yesterday morning I saw the sun rising on my way to work for the first time this year. That means only two more dark winters-worth of driving to work to go before I can retire!!
Me? Counting the days? not half!

Of course, this means the grass is growing quite quickly, so the garden looks very unkempt. However, the sheep are enjoying a mouthful of fresh grass, rather than the hay they have been munching all winter.

Said sheep are beginning to look like tankers on stilts. I was convinced that they were going to lamb during last weekend - they had that 'far-away' look in their eyes, and really, how much bigger can they get? The two older girls are really huge, and stomp around looking fed-up with all the weight they are lugging around.  Perhaps they will have twins this year - the ram we used this time was a twin himself and both these ewes have siblings that have had twins. In fact, none of our sheep have ever had twins yet, so who knows? I just don't ever remember them looking quite so big before, but we never quite know when the lambs will be due - raddle doesn't work brilliantly on black sheep!

Sunshine gets us out into the garden and results in a feeling of being rather overwhelmed. There is so much to do and not really that much time to get it all done this time of year.
We will be planting 100m of beech hedge this spring. This will be where the neighbour's giant leylandii hedge got cut down just 11 months ago. BUT we have to wait for the ground to dry out a bit more, so that Yvon can get his tractor onto our field to harrow and re-seed it first. I'm damned if we will plant 100-odd tree whips for him to miscalculate and plough them up again. Anyway, I'm hoping it will make the planting itself a bit easier.

We have managed to coppice some of the big hazels on the boundary (till the chainsaw cord snapped). We have used the poles to make a fence to shield a row of raspberries that I planted a bit close to the sheep fence. The sheep feasted on them last year, despite all our attempts to fence them off. HOPEFULLY this hazel fedge - more useful than beautiful - will keep them safe from the worst depredations of the sheep.

We have also weeded the ground under these raspberries and mulched it with old hay, so it looks much tidier now as well. With any luck we will have loads of raspberries this year again (this is only a small fraction of my soft fruit plants)

In the meantime, there is the hedge round the orchard to lay - Pete already has a tendinitis from using secateurs to cut some of the smaller branches - needs a physio. Bought a nice big pair of loppers and a new billhook today - must get it properly sharpened-up.

So, on the whole my initial panic was unfounded - the garden scrubs-up quite quickly with a few days toil, and starts to look less like a wilderness and more like a garden, albeit not quite up to Wisley standards!