A weekend at home

With the ground still hard and frosty, the thought of attempting anything in the garden is out of the question. The garden is looking very forlorn and the heap of manure which is waiting to be dug into the vegetable plots will have to sit where it is for another week. So instead a pottering weekend around the house and planning what we will grow when the weather does improve.

After a trip out for flowers (see picture) and food for the garden birds, Mrs C set up in the dining room with her new sewing machine. She's not had one before so it's very much experimentation and a few simple projects - a draw string bag and a lavender bag with lavender we bought in from our garden and dried.

Meanwhile I rummaged through the seed box to see what vegetables I already had and decide what to grow. Last year was the first proper year in our garden and very much a learning process on the veg front. War was waged on the slugs and snails, beet leaf miners and blackfly and while victory was not always mine, we had some lovely veg. This year we're hoping to try much more and also try some things we've never eaten let alone grown - salsify for one!

We were extremely pleased to see a jay in the garden this afternoon. They are usually very shy birds, rarely straying from woodland. So to see one in the suburbs was a great surprise. They never stay around long so had gone before we could race for the camera. It can only have been the very cold weather of late that's made the jay come this far in search of food. The garden has certainly been teeming with birds lately - collared doves, blue tits, great tits, thrushes, blackbirds, robins and the blousy pigeons stupidly trying to squeeze onto the bird table despite the nuts. seeds and bread scattered on the ground below.

We really must get out into the garden next weekend though!