A bit of a physical day

I've been wondering when I'll get that achey-back feeling like I did last year and was beginning to wonder if my sole reliance on gardening-as exercise was going to fail me this year. But it seems not.

Today I spent a bit of time off and on over the whole day outside (along with making bread with the kids, juicing a backlog of oranges we had accumulated from our vege box and turned frozen bread crusts into garlic butter snacks and read books amongst other things).

~ I snipped up the remainder of the branches and sorted them into a mulch pile and those that will be stored for next winter's firewood/kindling.

~ I transferred the soil from the frogpond into one of the garden beds to build it up a bit.

~ I hand-dug around in the potato patches to see if any of the seeds were sprouting or if I needed to start again. I did locate some sprouts slowly making their way to the surface so will leave them to it for another few weeks and will hopefully see some action.

~ I removed a large bucket of woodash from my fireplace and sprinkled it over all my garden beds.

~ I weeded my front garden, and planted out my herb seedlings.

~ I popped one courgette seedling down into the garden even though it may still be a little cold for it. I still have another 2 continuing on inside my house. No other spring seeds/seedlings have been transplanted just yet, I'm letting my wintery veges continue on with their thing. Still no sign of any carrot or onion seedlings popping through the soil.

~ Did a bit of reading on my sunny front porch of a new book "How to Grow More Vegetables" by John Jeavons that I blogged about a few months back and decided to go ahead and purchase. So my focus will be on aerating the soil more than I have been and consequently creating a raised bed (I half-heartedly tried it out today on one bed and it looked lovely and fluffy aferwards). I will be doing further reading to get ideas on closer planting (although I don't plant in rows anyway and plant closer than recommended, it appears that this theory is closer again).

~ Re-sowed more seeds into a propagator that was accidentally knocked over by a friend yesterday (a shame that the significance of what happened was lost on her - I guess it did just look like a tray of soil...)...but I'll forgive her lol.

~ The chickens seem a lot more relaxed although one of the younger ones if still quite skittery (and gets a bit picked on) around the big ones although the other young one is quite happy (and seems to be accepted) to eat alongside them. It's been interesting to see the pecking order develop. The little ones look keen-as to be out scratching around with the big girls, but I'm not so keen just yet incase they get chased off again. I want to wait till they get a little bigger so they can't squeeze through the wire mesh for a start. At least by removing the branch pile from against the fence, it can't be used to walk up and hop over the fence any longer.