Photos

 OK so I haven't posted any pictures for a while so I'm going to make up for it now. It has been all go in the garden for a couple of months now, we've had some unseasonably warm weather of late and living in England you never know how long it's going to last, so I've been working outside as much as is possible.

Most of the lawn has been replaced with raised beds on one side and my mini forest garden on the other. I hate mowing the lawn! Although we do have a decent sized area of grass left at the end of the garden.

The raised beds have been filled up with a mixture of straw, home made compost and top soil. I think that I may have to add some bought compost as the level has dropped quite a lot since I made them. The only problem is some wheat that is growing in them, this has come from the straw, but it's quite easy to pull out.

So far I have planted one bed with potatoes, which have just started to come up and another with some onion sets. I have lots of things growing in modules in the green house to go out later.

I'm quite pleased with how the forest border looks it still needs more plants but so far I have put in a pear, nectarine. crab apple, a couple of hazel nuts, gooseberries, blackcurrants, loads of different herbs and some strawberry runners. Some of the plants are new others have been moved from elsewhere in the garden. There are also some apple trees and a plum that were already there, oh and I have also put in a couple of silver birch trees, just because I like them, either side of a bench which will give a nice shady place to sit. Lastly I have sewn some flower seeds some of which are edible and some of which are good companion plants.

The rocks around the edge were already in the garden and the path is edged with the trucks of some leylandi which we took down recently. I have had to buy some bark for the path and some compost when the home made stuff ran out.

I particularly love my new crab apple tree, which was my mothers day present from my lovely children. It is quite large, I have no idea how they managed to get it into Toms little renault clio, but they managed to get it home without knocking all of the flower buds off and it is looking really beautiful with all the blossom out.

About a month ago Emma and I went collect these 3 little beauties, we got them from the same place that we got my lovely Hettie, I had spoken to the lady about ducklings when we were there to collect Hettie and she phoned me to say that she had some available.

They have grown a lot in a month and are now in the chicken run, although they are seperate from the chickens. Alice is the biggest she was yellow when we got her but she is slowly turning white, Dolly is the khaki campbell and nugget is black and yellow, but the yellow is also turning to white. Hettie seems to prefer to be with the ducks than the other chickens, if you look at the photo you can see her sitting next to the duck pen.

Constuction is underway on the new duck run, we are building on the side of the existing chicken run and you will have to go through one to get to the other, this will mean that if we want to let them live together all we have to do is to leave the inner gate open. We have a shed in there that will be the ducks house and we need to get paddling pool for them to swim in.

Anyway I have probably waffled on for long enough! I will try not to leave it as long before I blog next time.