Chasing Butterflies

Maera chasing butterflies for the shadows challenge.

Still not at 100% so didn't venture out today but needed air. The air is definitely warmer so I spent some time in the polytunnel for the first time this year. There's a great deal of sorting to be done but I cleared a good space, mixed some cheap bagged compost left over from last year with gel crystals and garden earth, then sowed the first salad, beet, chard and borecole seeds.

I obtained a mass of plastic storage boxes a couple of years ago, that act as nursery pots from which I can prick out seedlings later to put in the vegetable plot. The rest remain where they are sown, undercover, and feed me until the outdoor crops are ready to harvest. There is generally more than I need and the excess of seedlings and plants are offered around. When I cleaned them out I found chrysalises lying dormant in the old soil. I've gently removed them and put them all with some of their earth to one side and will watch them to see when they pupate. They gave me the idea for the blip shadow.

Living in Italy for so long, I use more cooked vegetable leaves than most and go looking for seeds which most people have rarely, if ever, seen in Britain. Not everyone loves chard and borecole as I do, or indeed the bitter chicory and radicchio salads, which make wonderful cooked vegetables when they get a little tough. These are my staples and this year, with the exceptional mild weather, I've eaten my own veggies until the frosts in January.

The mad early spring clean is almost completed and I can abandon the house over the next few weeks for the garden, watching it resurrect from an untidy, stem and weed ridden wilderness into it's summer glory.