Sunday to Friday 07-12 February 2016

Beginning to Garden?

I suppose the week improved as it went on changing from mild, wet and windy in the early part of the week to cold, sunnier weather towards the end of the week with some night time frosts. That nagging gale force wind eventually abated too.

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The rainfall amounted to 19.2mm or 0.76” in old money. February last year was the driest month of 2015 with just 11.2mm (0.44”). The average for February is around 45.0mm (1.77”) and so far this month’s total is 25.2mm (1.02”) as we approach the mid point of the month.

I did do a little bit of gardening this week although it was restricted to the greenhouse. This year’s seed potatoes are all set out in the greenhouse chitting before they’re planted out when the weather warms up a bit. I also thought it was about time I tidied up the grape vine before it decides to shoot.

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All last year’s remaining leaves were removed and last year’s stems were cut back to the old gnarled main stems. I even cut back part of the old stem to give the potted apricot, nectarine and peach trees more light to hopefully help produce a good crop of fruit.

I couldn’t help noticing that our apricot will soon be coming into flower and Sue will have to get busy with her paint brush as there won’t be many pollinating insects about at this time of year if indeed there are any.

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We’ve some thing in the greenhouse to crop too. I was hoping for some salad leaves from the two beds we planted up in late autumn but those succumbed to the damp weather and haven’t got any crops to speak off. I might resow them at the end of this month and see if I can get them to produce an early crop.

What we do have to crop is some mint.

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This tub of mint was cropped pretty extensively all through last summer and by autumn time it looked in a very sorry state. I thought we’d done the impossible and actually killed off mint. I’d a bit of space left in the greenhouse once all the plants requiring winter protection had been transferred inside and I took pity on this tub of mint. I’m hoping it will  keep us supplied for a few weeks with fresh mint. A bit of a treat!

 

Saturday & Sunday 13-14 February 2016

A Tale of Two Baths

It's been a bit of a cold weekend with temperatures not much above freezing point but with some decent sunny spells.

I'd decided the topic for my blog post before I had all the necessary photos I required. On Sunday morning I'd taken some video of sparrows and a couple of starlings having a proper splash in our bird bath.  From the video I managed to grab one or two stills which I posted on my Facebook page. I've added a couple of those images below.

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After a bit of messing about the edited video was completed and uploaded to YouTube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the birds have finished splashing about and the bird bath is empty I think they expect me to dash out and refill it so that they can have another go.

 

Now to the second bath of the weekend. I've blogged before about the special charter steam train called the Tin Bath named after the Last of the Summer Wine television programme. On Sunday it was due to travel through Wakefield passing close by our allotment. This was too good an opportunity to miss so my plan was to pop down to grab a quick video clip as it passed by. I knew from the Internet the train was running almost an hour late and so judged our arrival time accordingly. Trouble was I got it wrong and we arrived just in time to see smoke billowing over the bridge parapets. So as you've probably guessed there are no photographs of the second bath.

 

To make up for that I've added some extra bird bath images.

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