What's cooking?

Spring has sprung,

 the grass is riz,

I wonder where the birdies is?

I know where they have been. We had a pair of wild mallards visiting our tiny pond, having a nice time, thank you very much, eating all the newts and stirring up the muck at the bottom of the pond.

I had hoped that they would stay and raise a family but Miss Vanilla, the feline from next door, has scared them away.

What's cooking? 

I've been sterilizing the soil from the auricula pots as I've lost about a quarter of my collection of plants to vine weevil grubs. The only good thing to be said about the pesky grubs is that they are white and therefore easy to spot in the soil. I left the container full of earth cooking on top of the Aga for several hours which I hope has done the trick. "Smells strange" said Himself when he came into the kitchen!

I've

still

got

plenty

left.

Everything is way behind schedule in the garden. Most of the vegetable garden is still bare soil, there are just a few crops sheltering from the wind under cloches. Both greenhouses are crammed with plants waiting to be planted out.

We had four tons of stones delivered as a top dressing for the drive. It has looked very scruffy ever since the garage rebuild. This is how it looked before.

We  scraped off quite a bit of moss and had a bonfire.

The 'St Patrick's Day' daffodils, that usually flower on their saints day in mid March, are looking good. They are a soft yellow, not too strident, and become even paler as they age.

It was a satisfying job to rake the new stones into position. In the evening friends came round and Janet, (the heart expert!) stepped out of her car and immediately bent down and picked up a perfectly heart-shaped stone, the only one to be found in four tons of the stuff!

I'm much better at finding vine weevils.

The tree peony has been in the greenhouse all winter where it seems to be very happy!