Flowers.

The chickens we are baby sitting are doing well.

Troubles doing her best to divide her time between looking after the new guys and the originals. I've been working more than double my normal hours and its been hard on the dogs, I've also been spending a lot of my time off applying for new jobs. I lost count of how many jobs I've applied for long ago.

The globe artichoke should flower soon. We actually have quite a few flowers. We have many french beans flowering, courgette, cucumber, 

nasturtiums. 

large rudbeckia,

Dwarf rudbeckia, 

echinacea.  

The roses are starting to flower again, we have strawberry flowers, raspberry flowers, pea flowers, and tomato flowers. So my garden might not yet look like it has many flowers in it but actually we have quite a few. 

We spent the morning at pagan pride.

We had a lovely time meeting all of the stall holders and having a good look around. They had some beautiful stuff for sale, I bought some incense and different types of stones but it was mostly a bit too expensive for me.

The weather was truly lovely though, not a cloud in the sky.

We nipped into trowel garden center to buy spring bulbs on the way home, but they didn't have any bulbs to plant yet.

I also bought a new white clematis and two punnets of strawberries. The clematis will be going into the garden while the strawberries have been de-hulled and frozen ready for wine making. It made about 1.2 LB so we will need to buy more and I'll try and do a half strawberry and half plum.   

The strawberry tops all went to the chickens, and they really enjoyed them. :)

3 hour and fifteen minute walk.

We took the dogs to Wollaton Hall (Batmans Wayne manner) We saw lots of deer watching the world go by. The OH and his brother caught some pokemon while I held onto the dogs. :/

The building really is very beautiful and in a lovely setting.

Niche went for a swim and Trouble looked at the water with disgust, like normal.

                  It was a really lovely walk and was the perfect way to prepare me for a busy shift                                                                                        at work.

I ordered some cool containers!

I bought this bucket. It's called a honey bucket. I'll be using it for blackberry picking/wine making and stuff. 

I really love this. It's just big enough to fit in an evenings worth of wine for one person. Good thing I bought two. One for me and one for the other half. :)  

I thought this would be good for homemade skin creams.

This! Well this, I thought would be bigger, but I can use it for homemade ketchup... I guess. Or Basil oil. 

I bought quite a lot of stuff. Lots of lids. 

I used one of the jars for the evening primrose. It's so cute! 

The st johns wort oil is changing colour which I've read is normal. 

chickens and herbal suspensions.

Our baby sitting charges are having a nice breakfast of corn on the cob and scratch. They gave me the most perfectly round egg that I have ever seen in return. I've missed seeing them, but by gum are they noisy. Egg song, egg song, egg song all morning. 

I also left the st Johns wort to dry out some before putting them in a container and adding olive oil. I have to leave them for a month before straining and then I can use the oil. 

I've ordered more little jars for the evening primrose and any other little projects. I am very excited about these jars. I bought some really nice ones. Not sure how big they'll be and it seems I removed the really useful sized bottles, for some reason, but I'm still excited. 

I did a bit of foraging when I walked the dogs today.

I picked half a dozen flower heads of evening primrose, I'm going to make an infused oil for bruises and minor cuts with it. I'm also going to do the same with the st Johns Wort that I picked at the same time. I won't be using them together, my sources tell me that it could be a very big no no. 

They are such pretty colours. 

Weedin'

My first courgette harvest. I'm quite proud of them really.

The eggloo the day before the chickens are due to turn up. We managed to get it built properly with a lot of help from the OHs brother, and, I have to say, very little from me.

I've been busy doing other things. I dug over and weeded the first half of the boarder, ready for my autumn sown seeds to be delivered. 

I didn't dig out my newly transplanted Iris plant.

And I didn't dig out my geranium pretense. I'll give the weeds I couldn't dig out a hand weeding, and I'll rake it over again to try and make it a finer tilth. 

My winter sweet was given a wide birth as I really don't want to hurt it, and it's meant to be sensitive. 

My poor impoverished soil. :( I'll be using all of last years compost on this area when autumn arrives.  

I've also made a start on clearing out my greenhouse of all weeds and unneeded stuff. I'll post about it once I'm done.