This morning I dragged Daisy outside to help me grapple with a seething mass of netting that arrived from Harrod Horticultural for me. I ordered a bunch of butterfly netting to put over the frame I made a couple of weeks ago around my veg patch. I’m slowly turning it into a protected raised bed; particularly important to protect the little plants from the great stomping feet of the chickens. It also means that when I grow brassicas in that bed next time, they won’t be destroyed by caterpillars from cabbage white butterflies, one hopes.

An hour and a half of measuring, nailing, pulling and tugging and the net box was finished.

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The picture above shows the finished product on the right! You can see in the foreground, in front of the composters, I plan to create a similar bed with more left over wood and the rest of the netting. We recently got around to cutting up a bunch of tree offcuts and creating a beetle haven, next to the composters. Hopefully only good beetles will live there and the bad ones will stay away! I guess either way, it will give me something to take photos of.

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The greenhouse has a set of growbags in them looking rather bare at the moment. Somewhere deep inside them are some seeds just waiting to burst forth, but nothing of yet. Hopefully, once germination takes place, we should have two planters containing peppers (two different varieties), one containing chillis, and another containing small melons (cantaloupe). I have another planter that has yet to be opened and I’m still wondering what to put in it. I considered tomatoes, but we don’t eat many tomatoes (we usually make them into pasta sauces!). Not sure… ideas always welcome!

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Daisy spotted this nice sweet pea container at the garden centre last week. I think it’s rather cute, and the sweet peas are growing on well. It should look really nice once it’s flowering.

Here’s some other pics from around the garden:

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This is Vicious. She’s the boss chicken and picks on one of the other chickens (Puffy) rather too much – hence her name. When the Sun comes out and the temperature warms up, the chickens like to lay back, lift their wing and let the warmth get under their feathers. It doesn’t look too comfy though.

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This pigeon doesn’t have a name, but perhaps he/she ought to. It visits our bird feeders very regularly to get a good feed of sunflower hearts or fat snack. It roosts in the fir tree at the back of the garden near the veg patch and I wonder if it even might be nesting up there. It’s getting quite used to us now and didn’t fly off when it walked around the corner to find us sitting on the bench enjoying the sun. Daisy got this photo of him.

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Daisy planted some tulips a while ago — way before I was in Amsterdam — and they’re only just starting to flower now. They’re a lovely colour and I think will provide quite a display once they all open up.

It’s great now we’re into daylight savings time and the evenings are at least long enough to get some stuff done outside and enjoy the greenery. It didn’t get dark until nearly 7:30 tonight.

Daisy and I spent some of the evening being rather un-eco-friendly and booking a bunch of cheap flights out of the country. I have to go to Barcelona, Valencia, and Florence in the coming 2 months, which is far too much travelling for me, but it’s made better when Daisy can tag along on the odd occasion and have a short holiday.

It’s bed time now… and I still haven’t done any web-work that I’ve been saying I’d do all day! Tcsh.