Reasonable weather over the weekend has enabled me to get quite a lot done. Much potting compost has been mixed and containers filled but these will just sit in the greenhouse to warm up for a week or two before anything goes into them. Germinated leeks, onions and cabbage have been moved from the propagator to a window sill and another lot will follow them, along with some Winter Gem lettuce. It's still too early for a lot of sowing but I've risked a tub of radishes which I'll keep under glass once germinated.
My main seed potato order arrived from JBA last week and thankfully it included the Lady Christl, my favourite earlies, but no Markies due to last year's weather. Not a great loss as they were just one of the new varieties I fancied trying. Lady Cs are now sitting in egg boxes in the spare bedroom but I've run out of space so the maincrops will have to stay in their bags for the time being.
I know it's not much but my first true harvest of the new season went into a lunchtime sandwich. Mustard and cress grown indoors and some fresh green shoots from the chives. Don't you just love watching things grow, even in the depths of winter!
Every year the entire population of barnacle geese from Svalbard in the Arctic fly south to spend the winter on the Solway marshes. There are tens of thousands of these birds and the noise they make when large flocks take to the air is unbelievable. Here's a pic of a few of them in a field just outside our village.
I did get a break from gardening activities and we had a drive round 'the island'. This is a bit of land sticking out into the Solway surrounded by sea on three sides. Much of it is taken up with peat bog and salt marsh but there are settlements round the edges of it. This is a view from near Port Carlisle looking to the remains of the old pier with Annan on the Scottish side in the distance.
I sometimes think I should have been a geography teacher!!
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