More Spring

Yay! The chard looks like it is germinating - lots of little bright red stems with the most delicate pale green leaves. Now all we need is for the broad beans to come up - I'll give them another week, and if there's no signs of them I will sow some more in pots indoors. Sowing outside was always a bit of a risk, but everything else has come up now - I was rather amazed by the salad leaves, as we have had some very cold nights here recently and I wasn't holding out much hope for them! Another few weeks and we'll be having baby leaf salad - so much nicer, cheaper and greener than the stuff in bags from the supermarket. Everything indoors has now germinated to some degree, although some of the sweet pea varieties have been disappointing. The tomatoes were up quickly, and even the cayenne chilli peppers are now growing, though they look very small and delicate.

Last night and today we have had the first rain for several weeks, so no need to water the garden this evening. I am quite relieved as I had planted two dozen bluebells which arrived 'in the green' the other day, together with a couple of the snow-in-summer, on the bank, and it was so dry that I was actually watering up there as well as the beds and the patio pots, which was all getting a bit tedious. All three of the new trees now have leaves, I am hoping that the quince will blossom, but maybe it's too young?

Wildlife notes - the first butterfly today, some sort of small white jobbie (not good on butterflies!). Lots of finches (gold and green) around the feeders today, they are eating me out of house and home again! Yesterday I was up at Builth Wells, at the Royal Welsh Show Ground, and spotted my first swallow of the season - then noticed there were lots of them around the buildings. Beautiful. Nothing so exotic here, just all the usual suspects - collared doves, wood pigeon, misc finches, sparrows, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, thrushes, misc tits, and of course the jackdaws, although they usually sit in the high trees of the garden behind us and rarely come down into the garden. Lots of bumblebees around - big plump ones. Interestingly, since I started the 'messy area' behind the raised beds, the blackbirds and thrushes are now mostly foraging there, rather than elsewhere in the garden, suggesting that even this small change has increased invertebrate numbers in that part of the garden.

Now that his beloved Asparagus has arrived and been planted, Matthew is getting impatient to see some results! If he's lucky, he may get a couple of spears this summer just to keep him happy - about a month's worth next year, then full production the year after. He will just have to learn to be patient!

As I write this, there is a heavy shower coming down and the sun is shining brightly at the same time - how very stereotypical April weather!