Baby pictures...

As with lambs, kittens and babies. Vegetables look at their best in infancy.

I ate this one soon after. Yes, I know, carrots are cheap and a bit prone to fly but they taste great when they are still small.
Raised beds mean that the fly don't know they're there and nonchalant ambivalence seems to be the secret to a good crop.

I am trying Kohl Rabi too. However, these are sparse enough to treat as unfortunate only children and I am reluctant to pull one yet.

The peas and beans are distributed amongst courgettes. They may jar initially but will add height to the bed soon and their flowers will break the greenery up.

Being picky about the visual aspect of a Grobag might seem a bit , well.. picky. It's fun to see how the whole comes together after the initial growth becomes homogenised though.
Perhaps others would benefit from applying their stated love of gardens to the development of new growth...

Off with their heads!

Monet Morning

Gottit. As the lillies and water messed around with his failing eyesight. The poppies would have flashed in front of him, bouncing waves of reds and blues from the ultra end of the spectrum.

Spring is now sprung... the longest day is summer in Northumberland

...spot the cat....

To continue the garden diary and to prop the blog door open, a few reminders of what's been going on here at Railway Cottages...
The bird life is more varied than this time last year. A seeming plague of snails has brought a thrush (just the one tho' but...) to the garden and the blackbirds are more plentiful.

Goldfinch appear from nowhere, in pairs, to monopolise the Niger seed.

This youngster was almost pick-uppable in it's early ignorance of the human menace..


By contrast, The Heron (thank you MF) checked around for frogs etc then left... reminding me that I should soak the land this weekend in preparation for a pond. I tried last week to scratch the surface but recent high temperatures have rendered the topsoil all but impenetrable... for those of us with Tennis Elbow anyhoo....


My favourite source of Fe, Chard. Grown in honour of the collider in Switzerland and, in the hope that I could find a vegetable that represents the letters 'Ri'. I looked to Japan but found nothing that would grow here.
So Courgettes dominate the raised beds. These were well worth the effort as no slugs have ventured northwards over timber and an ash barrier from the kitchen stove.


I have high hopes for a bumper crop. Actually, I shall probably harvest more than I can use and end up with a garden full of marrows... Never mind. It's the travelling, not the arriving etc...


Opportunist Poppies, thrown up by the carving of a parking space make every day's return a new garden. There's a frustratingly accurate Monet on my way to work and I know it won't be there when I have my camera...


I'll try though. It would be a companion to the Waterlillies from the London comparison earlier...