Just killing time...

As the high maintenance childcare regime continues, today all I had the opportunity to achieve in the garden was the watering of the greenhouse - accompanied by the increasing awareness that everything is gearing up a pace and I'm not able to keep up with it!

Here there are trays of lettuce seedlings that are pretty ready to go out into the patch, if only I had half a chance to do it, except of course it is quite dry out there now - amazing after all the rain up until just a few weeks ago!  

Various salads, perpetual spinach, sprouting broccoli and cavolo nero seedlings.

Baby leeks, leftover onions, Hil's french scabious and teasels from saved seeds

Of course this is not helped by the fact that I have already exhausted the rainwater collected by the new shed roof water butt, as it has only had a few occasions to collect since we managed to connect it...so I have to carry water from the butts connected to the garage roof right across the other side of the garden.  I must get A to investigate to see why the greenhouse water butts didn't seem to be successfully collecting when it did rain.

Good news from the dahlia front, though:

My dahlias from the old house

Nice meaty shoots emerging from all bar one of the pots containing my saved dahlia tubers from last year.  Still time yet for the last pot to shoot, hopefully.  Baby lavender plants urgently need potting on though, and the pelargoniums could do with a little essential tlc too...

Grandma's saved dahlia tubers, and my gauras for the summer pots

But happily, there are also a healthy number of shoots coming in the pots of tubers I found in the garage which grandma 'saved' last year...at the time I potted them up a few weeks ago I didn't hold out much hope as the tubers were very sad looking, mouldy and also, typically, totally unlabelled.  Looking at them now, it seems we will be playing 'dahlia pot luck' later this summer, when I try to work out what variety they are! Something to look forward to, then....

Roadside hedgerow in Edington just at the point of bursting forth into cow parsley heaven

In desperation and suffering the effects of extreme cabin fever, I forced the ankle biters into their wellies and windproofs and marched them down the footpath which borders our land, and across the fields to the next village...cruel, in the north-westerly wind, but necessary (for maternal sanity).  There are some pretty houses and gardens to nosy at, as well as the promisingly green fields. 

Cluckingham Palace, 2 coats finished at last

Last but not least, I present, painting finally completed - our compact and bijou residence for the ladies (due to arrive next weekend, if all goes as it should).  The run is ridiculously small, too small even to be a reasonable size for a chicken tractor, and I certainly wouldn't have paid extra for it, but it came with the house.  It will do for the first few weeks whilst the ladies accustom themselves to life 'outside the system' but I suspect that after that it will end up in the back of the garage gathering dust... if it survives that long, that is.  The whole kit and caboodle is definitely not as sturdy or well designed as I would have liked.  The process of painting it gave me ample time to inspect closely and there are so many things I would avoid in designing a future coop - the sliding pop hole for one - its a recipe for sitting water and rotting wood aplenty.  There are lots of gaps around all the door openings that I worry will make for a very draughty palace, and I've noticed that the perches are slightly lower than the nest boxes so that won't be good if the ladies decide to sleep in them instead.  This is the trouble with mail order, you can only see so much in the pictures!  I thought the wood would be sturdier too, thank heavens for our electric fence, is all I can say - I can't see this wood keeping out Mr and Mrs Fox on a determined direct attack on the house.

Shame really, I had felt really confident in my choice - the fully opening roof and front section, along with the slide out droppings tray mean that thorough cleaning and mite dusting should be as easy as it can be.  The wheels for easy moving about our 'paddock' system and the raised nature of the house giving shelter from the rain for the ladies and their food, were all aspects which we felt were really important for us.

It's a steep learning curve, that's for sure - and the hens haven't even arrived yet... we will just have to treat this first, cheap coop as a proto-type for testing out what we think works for us and what doesn't, with a plan to perhaps design and build our own in replacement.  

If anybody has any handy ideas or recommendations for us in coop design, gained from their own chicken keeping experiences, I would welcome your offerings with open arms xxx