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Monday 2 May 2016

It's May it MUST be Spring!

Walled garden. Stromness on the horizon
Ha!  Well sort of.  The sun is warm, if you can find a sheltered spot. But the weather is what can only be described as "changeable"! And temperatures are still a bit on the low side even for Orkney. Although the temperature got up to 10 degress C today. Double digits. Wow! Spring IS here.

So - of course it's time to get into the garden.  The gardening season is short in Orkney, usually May through to October IF you are lucky.  It takes till about now for the earth to warm up, but from now on things put on an amazing growth spurt.  You can HEAR plants growing!

So this weekend I cut the grass around the house and in the walled garden, and started thinking of planting "stuff".  So far I planted broad beans and peas.  Everything has to be protected from pecky hens till it has grown a little sturdier.  Hence all the green netting.  I also have a chicken fence to put up to keep them OUT so we'll see how that goes.




I do love being in the garden with the hens though. They love rootling around as I dig.  I'm creating a new bed in the walled garden.  Bit ambitious as I can't really cope with all the borders as it is. Though I do have help from neighbour, S, who does lots of the hard graft for me. Anyway the girls were having a good rummage in the earth where I had turned back the black plastic which was put down last winter to kill off the grass.  So far I've just planted some crocosmia "Lucifer" in this bed. But there are some plants to be moved from another border where things have got a little crowded, and some new ones to introduce too.


Um, yes that picture is a little off the horizontal!  But it's tricky trying to photograph hens while holding the camera with gardening gloves!

However Button did NOT like being ignored and is yelling at me to come and pay her some attention...


Meanwhile the rest of the hens and cockerels were having a snack on the remains of the carrots from last year!  I grew them in tubs which worked well but some were not worth pulling up but seem to have grown recently!  So - snack time for hens...


Did I mention Button?  Well clearly something distracted her...thankfully!


And then the weather went a bit weird for a while.  There were some short rain showers before the sun came back.


But a lovely afternoon in the garden for all of us, enjoying some warmth and sun!

11 comments:

  1. Sounds a little like here on the East Coast of England, weird weather. Sun, rain, sleet, hail and snow all in one day.

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    1. That's it! I see the "South" is going to be basking in 20 degrees this week. I can only imagine...sigh

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    2. Maybe you will get a lookin on the warmer weather? Or will you get a chill East wind?

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  2. What a wonderful post again today! You live in such a beautiful corner of the world; thanks for sharing all your lovely sightings with us. How happy your free-range chickens must be! Good luck with your garden work and hopefully a "long" season! Greetings from rainy Switzerland

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    1. Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for commenting! Oh yes my girls just love being free range. No predators to worry them so they get themselves up and put themselves to bed quite happily! Sorry you too have rain....

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  3. Love your pictures of your garden, hens and Button (my Lemon and Spartacus would say hello, but they are too lazy to get off the bed and venture downstairs)

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    1. Lemon and Spartacus - what wonderful names! And one mustn't interrupt the important "activity" of sleeping...

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  4. Great close up of Button. I love the idea of you and the hens working in the garden. Our weather has been much like yours, and I haven't made it in to the garden yet, to clean up. We're experiencing rainy, cool days right now so I guess it will be a while before I get started.

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    1. Oh I just love working around with the hens. Sometimes I just sit on the ground having dug over a patch and just watch them, and listen. I love all their little noises to each other! Today is very cold and windy so not outdoors time yet. I long to get out there - it's such a short season!

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  5. I would like to do something with my garden - it's massive and has been left to grow wild! Even just cutting the grass, I'll likely need a really good sit on mower or a tractor but maintaining that grass and whatever plants I want to grow...! Oh jeez! I admire your commitment!

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    1. Oh yes I have a sit-on-mower! Couldn't do it otherwise. My garden was just a sheep pen when I first moved here. It took a lot of industrial machinery to get it flattened and into any form of a garden. I do have help, but I just love being outdoors and I love growing plants and having all the bees and insects buzzing around. :-)

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