The Sneaky Magpie

A lovely weekend calls for pottering around the garden and car boot sales. We came home with a couple of good finds: jars, a lemon squeezer I always wanted, toys and books, an enamel teapot  for £1.50 and a an oil painting for £2 which is waiting for a suitable frame and will grace our living room wall. The car boot sale was excellent this week, it seemed that everyone had a massive clearout and brought it all along.

The teapot’s colours are really nice, it will be perfect for the garden. Forgive my back wall, the kitchen is not finished.

Husband is making an orange frame for the painting. In other DIY news, Freddie’s room needs decorating, the white is bit dull in his small space.

In the garden things are really growing, I have few fritillaria flowers, at first I thought I planted the bulbs too deeply because as soon as they came up they started to turn their heads down and the bells were almost touching the ground but soon enough they bolted.

Hyacinths are providing brightness to the garden and things are getting green. I am also impatiently awaiting the apple blossom, should be any day now, the buds are nearly bursting.

Cavolo nero and carrots are doing great inside and pok choi, mustard and radishes germinated last week outside so there will be something to much on soon.

I have a production line of flowers in the greenhouse, cosmos and zinnias are germinating like crazy but sadly Bells of Ireland and euphorbia are just sitting there, has anyone had any experience with these? Are they supposed to take that long?

We had such a glorious sunny weekend with mild temperatures and not a sign of rain. I definitely got the spring cleaning bug and did an enormous amount of gardening work.

At home, I put some daffodils into an vintage Sylvac pot and am waiting for their pretty yellow heads to appear.

We went to the first local car boot sale of the year and got an 80s Ryvita tin, another ink bottle for my collection and some great old terracotta pots for a fiver.

Last week I got very organised and drew the plan for my veg beds, then after being joined by Freddie I started painting them and they look jolly good. This weekend husband built a couple of beds and I dug trenches. We still need to put them into their permanent positions and hubby needs to put together one more bed. This means that half of that area is done and ready for horse manure. I also planted my red and white currant bushes and moved some roses. And nearly broke my back.

As if I was running out of time I started to weed the flower beds, sowed cucumbers, tomatoes, broad beans, sweet peas, rudbeckia, carrots and cavolo nero. I also replanted few things and then got crazy with cleaning the greenhouse. This massive clearout included washing the seedling pots and seed trays, mad sweeping, sorting out all the pots, getting rid of the old tomato soil and making a shelf. Then I swept the rest of the garden and believe me I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open (it’s 20.30!).