My Sunday

Sunday was predicted to be the only sunny day of the bank holiday weekend so I took the opportunity to spend most of my time outside.

After breakfast I went for a walk through the field of buttercups near our house.

This area is so beautiful at this time of year!

The yellow flag irises are in flower next to the pond.

There are pretty patches of ragged robin amongst the buttercups

And lots of clover.  The bees love this!

Next I made a flask of coffee and set off for the allotment.  Recently I was asked how we hold down the nets and micro fleece on our raised beds, so I took the following photos:-

Our hoops of pipe are attached to the beds using clips and are stabilsed by a length of wood at the top and ends.

All around the beds are these buttons.

Elastic is threaded through the net, near the edge and looped over these buttons.

The micro fleece is draped over the bed and held on with lengths of wood that sit on top of the boards.  They are held in place by a loop of elastic between two buttons at each corner.  A further length of elastic secures the edge of the fleece and stops it flapping around.  The long lengths of wood can be a little cumbersome to replace after working on the bed, but the system works.  It all stayed in place throughout the winter gales.

Finally we have a fruitcage.  The net is simply held in place by more of those buttons.

The buttons came from here. I hope that is helpful.

Next on my agenda was the planting of my tomato plants.  They have gone a little spindly in the greenhouse and needed to be either potted on or planted out.  As I grew so many this year (I got rather carried away when seed sowing this year!) my greenhouse can't hold all the tomato plants, so having given some away, the remainder are now planted out at both allotments.  I also transplanted some strawberries plants into this bed.

I then sowed a few dwarf beans, two types of radish, two types of spring onion,

two types of beetroot and two types of carrots.  All repeat sowings apart from the carrots Royal Chanteney 3 and Purple Dragon, the latter seeds were free with two other purchases of seeds.

I harvested a few more peas and a handful of salad leaves for my cheese sandwich at lunchtime! :)

Once I had watered everything in, including the sunflowers recently planted along the fence, it was time to go home.

Back home I did some housework, baked some cakes -

espresso muffins

(yes, those are sugar snowflakes on the muffins!  They were leftover from Christmas!)

  and a golden syrup loaf,

then cooked the evening meal.  Later that evening, knowing that rain was predicted for bank holiday Monday, I went out into the garden and cut the lawn and pulled up the forget-me-nots.  I was hoping that their removal would give me some more room in the garden for my summer plants, but I will need to cut down the hardy geraniums to find enough space.  My poor patio table is covered with plants waiting to go into the garden.  Next thing I knew it was 9:45pm and getting dark!  Time for a soak in the bath after such a busy day!  Then it started raining.  Good timing!