It's a Beautiful Day!

Daffodil Thalia

It's almost Spring and some days it feels like it is Spring already. This morning the sun was out and the air was crisp and clear.
Looking out from my bedroom window this view was beckoning me to come outside and work in the garden. Who could refuse an invitation like that? Certainly not me!

It was still a bit nippy outside, only 5 C / 41 F, but the temperature inside my Victorian greenhouse was a different matter altogether; 39,5 C / 104 F which felt like a very, very hot Summer's day.
With temperatures getting as high as that the automatic window openers had to be re-installed. They are removed every October as they get frost damaged if you leave them in during the cold season.
It's small wonder that the water cress I've sown last week in my Victorian greenhouse is coming up a treat.
Last February I'd sown some lettuce and some radishes too in my cold frames and they are doing great as well. It won't be long now before I can harvest the first radishes from my potager.
About a week ago I'd planted some garlic cloves and I have to check them everyday as the birds keep pulling them out off the soil.
As you can see it already has formed some roots and after taking this pic I popped the clove right back into the soil again where it can grow into a nice big bulb of garlic.
Recently I made this construction to keep the neighbourhood cats out of my freshly sown bed with broad beans. It worked alright but last weekend I bought something that would do the trick even better and here it is.
Inside the plastic tunnel the soil will heath up more quickly and hopefully the broad beans will grow that much harder too. An added advantage is that the doves won't be able to eat the tender seedlings once they come up and the kitties are unable to dig up my bed. That little tunnel was easy to install and only cost me 5 euros, so not a bad deal at all.
I bought something else as well; a very nice little weather station. It measures the amount of rain that has fallen, tells me from which corner the wind is blowing and it tells the temperature as well. Neat eh, and it was very easy to put together.
I like working in my potager at this time of year. It still feels very special after those bleak winter months to be out and about in the garden again. A potager is an ornamental kitchen garden as you well know, but so far you've only seen the kitchen bit, so here's something about the ornamental side of things as well.
In this little bed forget-me-nots had self seeded themselves all over the place. I decided to use them as edging in some of my other beds so I dug them up, planted them out and watered them.

Soon they will be flowering away like there is no tomorrow, brightening this bed up where I've sown purple broccoli. I've put some sticks into this bed that were left over from the pruning I did recently, another way to stop the neighbourhood kittycats from digging in my beds.
The foxgloves had also self seeded in my potager, so I dug some of them up as well and planted them as edging in another bed, right behind a row of forget-me-nots.
And while I was working in the kitchen garden today I discovered another little bloom, one of my favourite spring plants; the primrose! Slightly slug damaged, but a bloom nevertheless and at this time of year, every bloom counts!
copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

There are few (wo)men who would not wish to spend part of their lives in the most necessary and pleasant of all work, cultivating the earth.
William Morris, Useless Work Versus Useless Toils, 1884