Time for an update i think.

I have actually been quite busy in the garden the past few weeks but keep forgetting to blog so here goes....

We have tidied up the front garden and it now looks quite respectable. Some of the larkspur i sowed last year has come up and i sowed some more. I transplanted the lavender seedlings i rescued from between the paviong slabs last summer to the front also.

In the back garden we have sowed calendula, clarkia, cornflowers and nastertiums(sp?). I have planted a few allium bulbs that i should have done ages ago, most were rotten but a couple seem to be coming up.

I have tidied the herb garden and sowed more flat leaf parsley, some coriander and some tarragon. Whether or not they germinate remains to be seen but dd seems to be doing her best to prevent it buy trampling over them and digging them up!


The newly tidied (though you wouldn't know it) herb garden

We haven't sowed any veg yet but have been preparing the beds as best we can (considering they are falling apart). Have just been digging out the worst of the weeds, digging *in* the rest and applying manure.

The tadpoles are now about an inch long and the water in the pond is a lot less green than it was, think the tadpoles have helped a lot by eating lots of the algae.

Oh and we are getting a greenhouse but will probably wait until later in the year, so very excited about that.

Good News and Bad...

First the bad...I was investigating the frogspawn in the pond when i noticed a dead frog :o( I thought i had seen one in there a couple of months ago after a particularly harsh frost but when DP went to get it out he couldn't see it! It couldn't be the same one could it??? Surely it would have decomposed by now. A mystery as it *was* in the same place i'd seen it before.



The good news is that we have a newt living in the pond. DP tried taking a photo but it was a bit camera shy so i'm not sure you will be able to see anything in this pic...


I have a feeling that newts eat frogspawn. Will have to look that up.

The pond itself is looking very green which i hope is due to the change in temparature over the last couple of weeks. Obviously things are still a little unsettled since we cleared out all the extra vegetation last autumn. We obviously upset the delicate balance somewhere along the line. Oh dear.