Sunday May 8th

I remember this song from my childhood in the 50s, when it struck a particularly mysterious chord for me, “mother cried!”  Why should one’s mother cry over rain?  But it impinged on me somehow the power of weather.  Well at least we have had some rain, showers on Friday night and then another decent soaking yesterday morning. My whole garden seems to be heaving sighs of relief, and eveything has had a deep drink like a giraffe..

As a result Jane and I have both been able to get on with some planting.  Jane has put in some cabbage plants under a hen run I had, a Fort Knox for brassicas after her previous planting disappeared overnight.  I have put in 20 Galaxy Runner bean plants into the trench which has been waiting for them for a long time now, just crossing my fingers about a late frost, and I will probably follow them with the same number of borlotti beans today. 

 I also planted out my sweetcorn plants as they looked ready to move and were getting very pot bound in the green house.  They have gone in in a triangular block filling in the gap between the rows of spinach and carrot and the potatoes.  I think I will plant a dwarf french bean in between  each two or three.  Meant to be the Mayan  way, though  I still can’t remember the third classic member of the trio. All the corn is currently under plastic tunnels, for protection against pheasants and cold winds.  The potatoes are showing and I have earthed them all up.  More rain today please – we need to get the moisture right into the ground.

On Youtube I have just seen a little video by a guy in the States extolling the virtues of nettles for urinary tract infections and nettle root for prostate. Harvesting my nettles is another job for this week then. I have some wonderful long wristed heavy plastic gloves I found up in the woods which are useful for this. The comfrey is 4ft high as well, so that is due for a cut and turning into tomato and veg feed.

Chick production is very patchy this year. One hen has four, and the second broodie is a devoted mother to just one little chick, which she dotes on, but she is big enough to have raised a clutch of 12 or more. The third hen’s eggs are due  to hatch today.  Two of my rescue hens have now died and a third has been eating all her own eggs, so will have to be killed unfortunately.  So not so good on the hen front just now. But David has bought a trio of bantam Wyandottes. gold laced and partridge hens and a Gold laced but double sex linked cockerel who is a very splendid little fellow, and calls through to the young Welsummer in the next enclosure with great gusto.

Hey, it is 6.09 am, and the rain is falling steadily, on the just and the unjust. I am going to get up and make a cup of tea.