Warm sunshine, strong wind.

Strange but lovely day, wonderful warm sunshine with a cold strong easterly wind.
Two T-shirts and a fleece tied round the waist needed to keep my back happy.

The dog forced me to construct her a sheltered sunny spot using garden trolley plus coat, then she settled down to supervise my work.

I hoed out three 18' harvesting ridges from last years spuds. Leaving the soil in ridges over the winter really lets the weather work on it, this nicely weathered soil went straight to seedbed tilth. After raking in a light dusting of pelleted chicken manure I planted 120 Sturon onion sets and one 18' row of Early Nantes pelleted carrot seed, 300 seeds. Gave the carrot row one 11L rainstorm.

Then I set to work weeding my fruit terrace,. I started at the western end amoungst the "new" currant bushes where grass tufts and seed drift from my herb patch were the main offenders. As I moved east into and through the raspberries the weeds shifted to being strawberry runners, 90% strawberry runners. I have no need for more strawberries and thus nearly filled a 300L compost bin with strawberry runners plus other weeds. Towards the end of this stint I was working in the shade and my tiny hand wos frozen.

To finish my afternoons gardening I did the noisy stuff, strimmed and mowed the site drive and my plot side paths. Using the strimmer with my back to the wind was funny as I kept getting nice gusts of warmth across my arms from the exhaust.

As always my gardening is paced and I make full allowance for my bad back, half an hour of squatting to weed leads to quarter of an hour back stretching break lying straight and stretched out in the sunshine with my furry supervisor standing watch, or using me as a centrally heated windbreak.