A January Sunday
It was -2.5C in the vegetable garden last night, but no evidence of a frost. Most strange. The only reason I noticed was that there was no water coming from the hose to fill the hens’ bowl. These low temperatures have no effect on the vegetables currently growing. Today I picked a cabbage for supper and there are lots of huge cauliflowers to come.
The monster eggs are laid by Brighton. I thought the early ones were an aberration but she’s continued to lay the same size. In the UK a large egg is 63g-73g and a very large egg is anything over 73 grams. These are 80 grams! Well done Brighton-the-hen. I put it down to over-generous supplies of mealworms.
Now that we’ve entered the new year I’m eager to get on with jobs in the garden. First I need to get more pony poo for the greenhouse hotbed. Then I can start sowing the more tender seeds such as peppers, tomatoes and aubergines. However the trailer is full of broken glass and detritus from repairing the greenhouse so that needs to be emptied before I can collect some manure from the lovely Gilles in the village.
Me with Gilles & Néné the horse who provides some of our manure each year.
Now that buds are appearing on the blackcurrants and roses I can see where I need to prune - to an outward-facing bud. For the blackcurrants I’ll take out around a third of the stems and the roses will be cut right down with any crossing or dead stems being removed completely.
Blackcurrant in need of pruning.
One job I won’t be doing for a while is clearing anything from the pond. The water is very cold and deep within these pond plants around forty goldfish and dozens of gambusia are resting out the winter. They pop up occasionally when the sun is shining on the water, but for the most part they are conserving energy in suspended animation.
Not to be disturbed.
Tonight I’m cooking mushrooms and rice in rolled up cabbage leaves, with sweet potato chips. If it’s good I’ll put the recipe here on the blog. If not I’ll keep schtum.
Now I’m off to bid on a second-hand iPhone I’ve seen in an online auction. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Happy Sunday everyone.
