Another scorcher!

What a week of lovely weather it has been.  Typical, as it is the week when one of my main garden tasks has been to shovel leaf mould and compost, and barrow, barrow, barrow! (and tip and spread...)  Hot work indeed.

But we have achieved - hurray!

Two new vegetable beds finally completed.  Could do with a splash of rain, really, to help settle them down (although I have religiously bashed each layer down with my garden fork and stomped across the whole lot with a plank) and then I'd feel they were ready enough for planting into - with great trepidation this first season so soon after their construction! Not that I don't have complete faith in Mr Dowding, but you know how it is when you try something that you've never done that way before...

Meanwhile, I have at last managed to get the straw down under the rapidly forming strawberries, which look quite promising too considering they were only planted a few weeks ago.  Definitely a wise decision to select a late cropping variety - looks like we might be lucky and get to taste some home grown strawberries this year.

Lots of other stuff is coming along really well too - potatoes have been earthed up once already and are poking out through the tops of the ridges again...

Onions and spinach seems to be ok, but I am starting to twitch about whether I should be watering them...forecast for unsettled weather to return from Monday evening, so perhaps they will wait until then? The waterbutts down here in the veg patch are basically dry and I have to ferry water from the two garage ones now...

Lettuces are burgeoning beautifully, broad beans are flowering, but peas are looking distinctly patchy if not almost none existant....

I also completed the cardboard and horse manure/straw mulching of the gooseberry-rhubarb bed today.

This is intended mainly to suppress the major weed issue that this area had been left with, hopefully so that I can plant in the autumn or winter perhaps another, special gooseberry variety that I have set my heart on - Gooseberry 'Black Velvet' - which is a cross with a Worcesterberry and supposed to taste like bilberries. As I can't grow Bilberries really on our alkaline soil here, I am very excited about this, although it does seem that there is only one nursery in this country who sells these.

However, this dry weather has already taken its toll on the rhubarb which seems to have flopped quite severely - I wish I had completed this mulching earlier when the soil was so much damper to help seal the moisture in and perhaps protect the rhubarb from this.

A, having completed his wood shelter to great acclaim and satisfaction, was reminded (somewhat harshly perhaps, considering the weather) by me that an empty wood shelter isn't really helping anything very much... so from 9 o'clock this morning he set to to begin the Mammoth Task of chopping, barrowing, and stacking the Enormous Pile.

A 'before' shot of the Enormous Pile was requested:

Naturally to be partnered with an 'after' shot:

Obviously this is purely an interim 'after' shot - to be honest after 3 solid hours he hardly seems to have made a dent in the top... I did warn him that I feared the wood shed would be too small...but was unceremoniously accused of insubordination.

Sweepstakes are now being taken on how long its going to take to get to the bottom of the pile...

Also this evening at 9pm it was at last calm enough, set dry for the evening and tomorrow, and the bees had finally gone to bed so that I managed to get the first spray of the roses against the black spot that is already attacking some of them quite badly.  There are so many roses to spray! 3 litres wasn't quite enough and I ran out before I got to the last red rose by the veg garden gate.  Oh dear. I can see that a surreptitous cull of some of the less favourable colours and most severely affected candidates might be a wise idea if only to reduce the amount of spraying needed!

Last but never least, an update on the ladies...We are now getting 2-3 eggs a day, though these are mostly still pullet sized, but so far all have had yolks.  I had to throw one away today which had cracked too badly 'on descent' and the white was leaking out. Thought it wise to be cautious as I didn't know how long ago it had been laid.

However, we received our first proper large size egg today as well!

Bedtime check revealed this lovely scene:

Another first - first time they are all settled to sleep on the perches, rather than 4 crammed into the 2 nesting boxes, causing a terrible mess to be cleaned out in the morning before egg laying starts, and Margot up until now seemed to sleep huddled up on the floor by herself by the pophole.... But it looks like they've finally worked it out.

And I managed to pick Delia up for the first time today.  She squatted for me which she has never done before, so I was able to get hold of her. Interestingly, she seemed quite calm until L came in to stroke her - he was so desperate to - but she is obviously nervous of him as she started to wriggle and make panicking noises.  I have told him that his 'enthusiasm' to stroke her previously (eg chase her around the enclosure) has upset her and she needs time to get used to him.  She's obviously a lot more highly strung than the others.

But we are progressing, at least x