Well, the strange state of affairs continues with the corona virus and lock down but for us life is pretty much the same.
We've continued working on the garden as due to the lack of building materials we can't do much else. But the weather has been dry, sunny and gorgeous so it's been wonderful spending most of the days outside.
We finally got the trench dug all the way around the polytunnel and on a very hot day got the plastic cover on. We watched an instructional video on YouTube twice then went out to get it done. It looked easy on YouTube and we hoped we'd get it done in the morning. We didn't! It took all day. Trying to get the plastic tight and neat took some doing. It's not perfect but it'll do. I've planted my butternut squash seeds, they're in pots on the windowsill in the byre. Once we've a bench in the polytunnel they'll go in there. We've made 3 raised beds from an old oil drum Rich cut into pieces.
The female blackbird is still with us. As I mentioned on my facebook page we cut a gorse branch down with her nest in it. Luckily we were able to roll the babies back in that had fallen out and then we carefully put the branch back in the gorse bush. She's continued to sit on the nest and feed her babies. It's a wonder she's not been eaten by the cat because she really does push her luck. We have to keep the door to the byre shut as she comes in to help herself to the cat food.
I mentioned in my last blog that we'd found a pond in the garden full of frogspawn. We've now got a pond full of tadpoles, there are hundreds of them. There's lots of weeds in it but I'm going to wait until the tadpoles have grown before clearing it out.
The hot weather has brought in so much power that we've been having daily baths as there's so much hot water. The only thing we'd forgotten was we're not on mains water and as it's been dry need to be aware of how much water we have. At the moment all is okay, we're checking the water tank in the croft before bathing.
The garden is beautiful and starting to fill up. The forget-me-nots and primroses look lovely next to each other, marigolds are starting to appear and the geums are coming back to life. We bought a new rambling rose and have planted it next to a tree just in front of the pond. We aim to put a bench in that area as it would be lovely to have somewhere to have a sit down and relax. We're continuing to weed the veg plot and plant as much as possible, I planted a second lot of potatoes which was hard work. Rich says to imagine I'm planting chips and that'll help! Rich has planted peas, the broad beans, garlic, onions and radish all seem to be doing well. no sign of my leeks yet but the sunflowers I planted are all starting to come up in their pots. So despite not being able to carry on with the building work we are moving on with the garden.
Hoping everyone is staying safe and getting through these strange times. Take care.
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