Just Pottering

I've had two solid days in front of the computer so I rewarded myself with some timeout in the garden today. Changing from the trakky daks into the grubby jeans reserved for gardening starts to put me in the right frame of mind. The mandatory cap and secateurs stuffed into the back pocket completes the ensemble. I set out to plant a few bits and pieces left over in my little nursery area. This led to a wholesale clean-up of the nursery - weeding of pots, chucking out of plants that have succumbed and rearranging of the rest. Then it was time for lunch - more yummy chicken and sweet corn soup!

After lunch I decided that a bit of weeding was called for (which the chooks were grateful for) and this turned into a wholesale cleanout of the bed on the south side of the house which is overun with sweet alyssum Lobularia maritima. It was looking very tatty although still gamely in flower. I pulled it all out and am sure in the knowledge I will have another carpet of alyssum there shortly judging by the number of seedlings coming up.

A trip to the chooks with an armful of weeds meant checking the vegetable garden and I decided to do some more planting in there. In went some carrots, spring onions and beetroot seeds next to the emerging seedlings of the crimson flowered broad beans (I was very late getting them in). The first photo is of last years crop. Then I threw a handful of potato fertiliser on the emerging garlic shoots (second photo). I figure if it claims to help potatoes it will help garlic too. Then it was back to the kitchen to collect a pair of scissors with which to harvest the enormous amount of rocket I have growing (third photo). Letting a couple of plants go to seed every season means I never have to buy seed or seedlings of this delicious salad green. I adore it!