Today I shall be mostly...

...making newspaper pots. (Found via Plot Holes, and magic they are, too)

Phase Two...

...or should it be phase three? Either way, Julia and I ended the 'garden in limbo' stage by breaking out the forks and starting digging again. We're tackling the bed that previously had legumes (well, a bean-frame that supported evil bindweed shoots) and looked summat like this:


The initial intention was to mulch this completely in something that would kill off the weeds, and then plant our crops through holes made in the mulch. On closer inspection, and given our eagerness to be digging things again, we decided that the surface was far too compacted to simply mulch; it would need a good digging-over before covering up. With this thought, by the end of today, the plot looked more like this:


Last week I was digging over the compost heap (as you do when there's nothing else to dig) and discovered a wee little froggie hibernating in amongst the rotting gunk. We went home to make him a pond but by the time we got back he'd scarpered. At least this leaves the whole compost heap ready to dig into the soil before covering it up. I sense some heavy digging, lifting and carrying coming on this weekend!

In other exciting news, even our ineptitude hasn't prevented things growing. We have the following signs of spring:
Buds on the blackcurrants


Buds on a couple of raspberry shoots:


Some of the transplanted rhubarb:


Garlic - and this is the most exciting, coz we actually planted this stuff. So far 22 out of 33 cloves have sprouted.... that's a 66% success rate so far!