Cowslip

Busy day, mostly spent doing garden things. This is obviously a very happy-making way for me to spend the day - even when (like today) a lot of it was spent on back-breaking work. We have very heavy clay soil here with, just to liven things up a bit, patches of rock hard dry reddish soil that have the texture of dried out peat trying to turn into rock. And I found another half dozen arm-thick roots under the potato bed (don't know how I missed those during previous digging and rotovating...)

But the potatoes are in, and so is the redcurrant, the fig tree I planted yesterday is looking happy and I've found a cloche to put over the lettuces that are clearly missing the warmth of the cold frame. A million more seeds have been planted (during a rainy spell) and are now in pretty much every room in the house, depending on their need for heat. Tomato seeds, planted last week, have been granted the warmest seat in the house (in the bathroom, which is the one room heated all the time) to be joined soon by some slightly late chilli seeds.

Meanwhile, blipless near the end of the light part of the day, a chance remark by Chaiselongue sent me scurrying out into the garden to catch the cowslips in the last of the light. I did lots of kneeling down in the sodden earth to see underneath them, but in the end preferred this top-down view of their silvery flower cases (the name for them has escaped me - calyxes?)

Endless Maggie-worship on the radio today. Am still grumpy about the lavish funeral. The coverage on local telly over here focussed mainly on the celebrations in Glasgow and a (former) miner.

Ah well, on the plus side I think I heard the hoopoes today, so perhaps they are hanging around.