Friday 3 April 2015

Life on a Bench and Beyond

It may be traditional for Good Friday, but still too early, this year, to plant spuds (in our opinion) so I was mainly fiddling about, turning the compost and taking photos during the couple of hours spent on the plot this afternoon. The weather was drizzly but not cold (13°).
This is our trusty bench, which is likely to be replaced this year as its falling apart, but it's supporting a lot of life and the tiny lichen and moss patches are very pretty in macro-mode!

I was going to look up the types of lichen, but it's a lot more complex than I expected! It'll take a bit longer than I currently have, but here's a good place to start!
We know the wasps like to skim the top layer of wood for their nests; we've watched them do it over the last couple of years - fascinating.
Our rhubarb has sprung into life and appears well on its way to being a monster again this year (fingers crossed!).
Look at those intricate leaves starting to unfurl.
Forming from what looks like an egg (Or maybe I've got Easter eggs on my mind!)

Some of the raspberry canes are at last showing that they're still alive and the strawberry plants are producing fresh new shoots.
The photo below was taken after the winds last Wednesday/Thursday. The protective acrylic over my salad seedlings was snapped in half by that flying netted cage, so I've attempted to cover them - otherwise they look just too tempting for passing pheasants!
The netted cage from the other end of our plot! Wish I'd been filming
Our bottle cloches also blew away (twice). We managed to recover most of them, but the broad beans which were left unprotected are at their tastiest right now (because they're just sprouting) and a mouse has enjoyed at least one of them... We'll fill the gaps with Express seeds when we get some more cloches made up.
It was the first day of the Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Race so canoeists were going past on the canal (beyond the hedge). Only another 100 miles to go!
And Hungerford had the flags out as it's one of the checkpoints, at about 25 miles from the start.

2 comments:

  1. Love all your close-up photos and wish mine would do the same. What is your camera? Ours is useless.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, that's my little Olympus SZ-31R It's super macro option works pretty well - still get a lot of duffers though!

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