Very pleased.

Sour-dough bread, 36 hour rise with cheese, salt and pepper on the top. I hope it tastes as good as it looks. :D

Update: it does! It tastes divine.

So close I can almost taste it.

The garden so far.

For such a small garden, it has taken a lot of work to get it to the state that it is in today.

 And I wouldn't have gotten this far without a lot of help from my dad and my boyfriend. Thanks guys.

I still need to seriously improve the fertility and water retention of the soil, sow more grass seed, fill up the last raised bed, dig over/weed the border. Attach weed suppressant between the raised beds and cover with gravel.
After that and a bit of weeding I can start planting out, finish sowing, build my bean wigwams and maybe, Just maybe, I can start harvesting some food. We can only hope. :)

Things are coming along - Nettle tea.

I set out early this morning, looking for nettles.

Niche came with me. :D

Well that didn't take long. I found this bank of nettles not five minutes from my house. 

The highland cattle are having a little rest. Perhaps they're not even up yet. Lazy cows. 

 I know I've complained a lot about moving away from my dads, but when you have a view like this a twenty minute walk away, it kinda makes everything better.

I filled a carrier bag full of nettles and chucked um all into a bucket.

Filled the bucket with water, with the tap with half a mile an hours water pressure. 

stuffed a brick on top of it all to keep the nettles submerged. 

And hide the bucket away, as far from the house as humanly possible, as this concoction is going to be very, very smelly.

The potatoes are starting to come up now. I've been covering them with alternating compost and grass cuttings, depending on which one I have at the time.  

It is getting better out there. I still have a lot of work to do, lots of clearing and digging. But I'm starting to feel better about it all. 

Sowing seeds.

My tomatoes, I had labelled them but the cat pulled them all out.

This is going to be for the cucumbers. 

I'd run out of labels for these pots but they're cabbage, tomatoes, cape gooseberry.. And erm... Hopefully I'll remember what the rest are when they're up. :/  In the tree root trainer I have half a dozen broad bean Karmazyn.

strawberry, basil, spare chillies, rosemary and squashes.

I bought labels for these, thyme, cuca-melons, celery, cabbage, cauli, brussles, Sutherland Kale and more basil.

And my ever present audience are in attendance as always.  

I'm going to try an anti crow collar on this guy as I would quite like to keep a rooster. If it doesn't work I will have to sell or cull him and I will only do that as a last resort. 

Update.

I'm getting quite good at yeast bread now, I'm getting better at sour-dough but I'm still not getting consistently good results. I think practice will be the only way to improve upon it.

 Esme the cat is all grown up now. Looking pretty in her new collar and tag. She still likes to fling cat litter all over the floor though.

The daffodils are all out now looking stunning, and smelling nice. Half of the tulips have finished now but the other half are still looking good.

I'm doing quite well with the garden now. I've only got one more raised bed to dig over and fill with compost and half of the boarder to dig over. I can finally start planting up once this is done. So hopefully by next week I'll be planting up.

The tomatoes were planted into their grow bags yesterday, and I finally sowed cabbages, leeks, cucumbers and teddy-bear sunflowers.  I might just manage to get everything done in time after all.

April.

I love April. Out on my walk with Niche we found a field full of lambs. >_<

They're a rare breed but I've forgotten their name, its written on a bill board next to the field.

Niche managed to hurt herself on the walk and is limping. I hope she'll be better tomorrow. 

I've been making some headway with my garden recently. I've planted my cut and come again lettuce.

should be enough to keep me going.

I sowed parsnips, carrots, beetroot, turnips and radish. The radish and turnips have germinated. 

I planted out the broad beans I sowed three weeks or so ago.

I planted out the peas that I sowed 15 days ago.

Still have a lot of work left to do. :/

Thankfully the chickens are fenced away from the rest of the garden now.

The babies are living with the big chickens fully now. I can't say the big chickens are friendly exactly, but they tolerate them. 

Mean old chickens.