Spent the day on gardening one way and another. A visit to the garden centre for more jiffy 7's, and some sweet pea seeds (and lots of other impulse buys!), then an hour in the back garden sowing some seeds for cutting flowers, and planting some cauliflower starter plants. I've put perforated plastic over them as I haven't properly hardened them off.....although the thermometer in the tunnel shows that the temp has been down to zero a couple of times lately....so possibly they have hardened themselves.
The bed I planted up today was very dry. I watered it a lot with a can, but I am hoping the rain which is now falling (thankfully) will do a more thorough job of it. The perforated plastic is supported on stakes and build-a-balls so the rain will drip through quite well....at least it can't run off.

Then I sowed the sweet peas in jiffy 7's and put them in the propagator indoors, also one courgette seed...a Jemmer, for putting into the greenhouse beds for some early results. The sweet peas will be put to grow up with the runner beans. I did that last year and enjoyed the pairing. It meant that the sweet peas got picked a lot, which they need to continue flowering, rather than being forgotten.

Then I went to the plot for an hour and a half....again the only person there....and it was beautiful there this afternoon. I didn't get warm enough to take off my coat as it was rather windy, but I wasn't cold. I have now done the bit for the early spuds...so now we need to go and get the manure to plant them in. I was going to get DH to rotavate it in, but I think it might be better to do a trench and lay the muck along that and then put the spuds in that, then bury them. If anyone has a better suggestion I'm all ears!!!!

I hope we get a good downpour, as although I do need to carry on digging at the allotment, it was getting harder by the day to dig the soil there. This rain should soften it somewhat.

The plotholder next to mine has put in two rows of spuds....a sign that I should be doing mine. Looks like we'll do it Saturday...weather permitting.

My throat came to nothing....probably because of the massive doses of Vitamin C I took to stave it off......!

In Tesco's this morning I found a splendid cooking magazine....Country Kitchen. It is full of ideas for using up garden produce. For example there are 11 recipes using lavender this month. And a couple of pages on growing cauliflowers. An article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or as my DH calls him....Hugh Fearlessly Eats-it-all!) about how to make wild beers...ie dandelion and burdock, and nettle beer! All in all it is a very good read....learn more about the magazine at wwwcountrykitchenmag.com