Never take anything for granted.

I made these lovely little bunny rabbit shortbread cookies this morning around doing some intensive gardening and chicken maintenance. 

As you can see a mishap occurred just minutes after I took the top photograph. I pulled the baking sheets out of the cupboard and unfortunately a tin fell out, smashing the lid to my tea bag container and destroying my bunnies.  :(

They taste really nice though, even if they are in pieces. 

Good news and bad news.

The good news!
I've sown my squash seeds today. :D

Volskaya grey winter squash
Musquee de provence
Anne swartz hubbard squash

All from Real Seeds. :D

Ok. The bad news. I've been working double my normal work hours for roughly six months now and with everything else I've had to do I've screwed my feet up. I've barely managed to go to work, never mind do anything else. Anyway. I've got three days off now, yesterday I just rested and today I've sown some seeds and pottered around doing a bit of weeding. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the garden has gotten away from me...I'll show you.

I mean, its got some nice stuff in there. We have jack in the hedge and goose grass. But it's mostly stuff I don't want there. :/

I don't want the brambles or enchanters nightshade obviously.

I want the sorrel (red pom pommy stuff) I have a lot of work to do.

This is how much I did so far. I've found strawberries, oriental poppy and geranium pretence. 

poppy

strawberry

geranium. 

I planted this foxglove last year from my dads garden. 

The lilacs doing well

So is the red chard

yellow chard

 the second oriental poppy. 

Even if it is growing between the garlic. 

The parsnips are well and truly in seed now and i'll be collecting the seeds from them, if I can reach. They're a good seven feet high. 

The compost pile is HUGE!

And has a potato growing out of it! 

 

Testing out my new tent at my dads.

Two hours at the allotment.

The other half and I spent a lovely couple of hours at the allotment today. :)

We went down with another bag of manure to throw on the squash bed which we diligently chucked all over it. We still need to buy a lot more... It's a very large bed.

 We took the lavender seedlings and planted them into the new lavender bed. You can see the courgette seedling too. :)

  I raked the bean bed as smooth as possible for the soil we have. The other half for some reason took a lot of his photos before I'd actually done any work, but we have now completed the bean row, sown the borlotti fire tongue beans and dwarf French beans. And I removed all of those weeds to the left of the photo. The other half removed the covered box on the strawberries and took out some of the weeds in amongst them. I'm going to put a luffa squash where the weeds used to be.

The bed that you can see the start of at the front of the photo was covered in another of the black netted boxes and needs completely weeding and digging over. Not looking forward to that.

So yeah. This bits been cleared now and I will be putting luffa in between the peas and strawberries. :D

We raked the potato bed smooth too and before the potatoes make an appearance and removed those weeds that you can see. I need to do something about that strange little fruit bed above the potatoes but I'm really not sure how to without stepping on the potato bed.

It still needs a lot of work but I'm starting to feel a lot better about the allotment now.

Poona kheera cucumbers.

I took a big chance and I've planted these Poona kheera cucumbers outside. I know that they need heat, and I'll probably regret doing it, but we'll see. 

I have a special little nighttime jacket for them (yes its a chicken drinker)

They have plenty so they don't mind.

I had my friends with me while I gardened. :)

Late start at work today.

I've got a late start at work today so I've had a really, really lovely morning getting some much needed stuff done!

I've mown the main part of the lawn. I've since moved the wheel barrow and chair but I'm torn about what to do about the butterbur (massive leaves you can't miss it) 

I want to get the rest of the 'nature area' mown now but I need to borrow a bigger mower and I just dont know if I should keep the butterbur. 

When I have more time I'm going to clear a bit of space for the stuff that I want to keep and sow some more stuff.

This bits probably my favourite at the moment. 

The parsnips in flower and the bees love it. 

The same with the kale. I'm glad that the bees are enjoying themselves and I'll have lots of seeds for next year. 

I cleaned out the chickens, walked the dogs and sorted out all of the snake, chicken and dog pots. Not a bad morning. 

The tree next door.

This is the tree in the garden next door. Now I wouldn't mind if the gardens were bigger and it didn't shade out the entirety of my garden! Yes its beautiful, and full of birds and home to hundreds of little creatures, but its blocking out the SUN!! :'(

Well... This is what my garden looks like...

When for the last six months, my job has tried (and almost succeeded) to kill me.