They're off the starting blocks - and away!

Still beginner size though!

Egg no 2 and 3 (Sat and Sun mornings')

...made for the daintiest breakfast portion of scrambled eggs for a young lady...

E's one-pullet-egg scrambled egg breakfast!

We are now on egg number 4, laid this afternoon at 3.30pm almost exactly...And it has become reasonably certain that the first mystery layer of egg 1 was Queenie, our Rhode Rock bossy pants, as she definitely laid nos 2 and 4 having been witnessed contemplating her navel in the nesting box for half an hour before each was found...and they were identical in colour and size to the creamy soft perfection of no 1.  So, if I am right, she is already clocking up 3 laying days out of the past 4, and she's only just begun, bless her.  Mind you, she is apparently supposed to be a high frequency layer - 300-310 per year of large to extra large brown eggs.  Just needs to work on the colour and the size now!

But this morning at 9.30 we also had a new entrant - Bunty the Bluebelle, who was witnessed by E in the nesting box and 20 minutes later on checking we found a warm smooth pale beige coloured egg with white freckles - definitely different to Queenie's creamier ones.

I must say I was surprised - she wasn't one of the ones I would have pegged for laying readiness based on her comb and wattles still being quite small and pale...but she squats very readily.  I would have expected Delia, Butterscotch or Margot next - but what do I know?  Not a great deal, obviously!

Either way, we've practically got ourselves a production line going...and it certainly seems to have reignited the enthusiasm of the small fry for checking the hen house.

In other news - the wood shed is going along swimmingly, since I suggested A utilise the quite nice looking thick planks of the heavier pallet for the cladding on the front, instead of fretting that the weatherboarding he had originally visualised was not available in the size he wanted from MVF...

...I think it looks better, and will weather down to the typical softwood grey like our garden furniture.  Certainly these planks were much better quality than the usual pallet material, which we used on the less visible and more protected west side under the overhang.  What's more, they were Free!

All he needs to do now is chop up the enormous pile of horse chestnut and stack it in there .... Forth Road Bridge, anyone?

I shouldn't tease really as I am no better myself.  Having got my 2 dumpy bags of lovely Viridor green waste compost delivered on Friday, I avoided the issue completely on Saturday and then spent over an hour with A today laboriously marking out the new vegetable beds with string and canes, only to suffer that familiar sensation creeping over me that it just didn't feel right...

So naturally I did what I always do in such circumstances - I procrastinated, weeded the other veg beds within an inch of their lives whilst I 'thought about it' and stole furtive glances across at the 3 beautifully lined out 4 ft by 14 ft north-south running beds with 18 inch paths between them...

Then I cooked the tea and wandered about some more.   Discussed it with the feathered oracles.  Looked at it furtively from inside the chicken enclosure.  Planted some irises in the front garden courtyard.

Finally I admitted it to myself (and rather more guiltily, to A) that tomorrow I will change them back to my original plan of 2 x 6 ft wide east-west running beds, 15 ft long.  Despite all the common sense advice that 4 ft is the optimum width so that you can easily reach to the middle from both sides, and that beds ought to run north to south if they can...it just doesn't feel right to me.  I know I will have to continue using my trusty plank to plant etc, and stretch a bit to weed...but actually I like to plant my short rows north-south across my east-west running beds.  And I know how many plants I need to a row on my 6 ft beds.  My rotation plan has always worked on 4 beds, not 6... and each of the 6 ft x 15 ft beds seems to hold the right quantity of each veg that we need...Finally, the 6 beds going the other way feels just overly fussy on the eye - I know in a productive garden this should not be the main consideration, but its important to me for it to flow and feel balanced in design, especially as it is so visible in the whole garden, which is how I like it.

Perhaps I will regret it and have to change it all next year.  Hey ho, so be it, if that turns out to be the case.
But I still intend to try the no-dig set up of the beds completely as Mr Dowding advises, and see what happens.

Bluey could obviously sense my state of nervous exhaustion at all this and so decided to give me a little cuddle to cheer me up:

Bluey's first voluntarily offer lap cuddle!

She was so funny, she just hopped up and settled down.  Delia looked like she was jealous for a few minutes, until she decided in true diva fashion that cuddles were demeaning, and wandered off.

But it made me feel better x