Just puttering around outside...

By mid-morning the kids and I were outside enjoying the sunshine. I've been dreaming up plans for overhauling the chicken coop and incorporating the kids old plastic playhouse that is no longer used. So, I dragged the house down the back of the yard and measured up where we'd put everything. The existing coop will need a few modifications to retrofit it onto the playhouse but will be easy enough to do. I intend on the back window of the house being where I can access the straw lining underneath the roost to change it. One of the windows will be where we open the shutters to access the nesting box to retrieve eggs.

We no longer place the chicken tractor over the garden beds now that they are raised, so felt it would be easier to just pick a permanent spot for it - which also coincides with the coop getting a little decrepit for moving continually.

I then checked my letterbox and had a lovely surprise. My name was drawn in Johanna's natural perfume giveaway and it arrived today. It's just yummy. I enjoyed sniffing it every few minutes to see how the notes emerged. Mmmm...it's been years since I owned perfume, and how neat to get one that has all the fragrances that I am usually attracted to.

After lunch I headed to the herbal garden as I had a few plants that needed planting out. I had acquired some pots of herbs while away on holiday (one of the places we stayed at was a herb nursery business) and I was able to grab from the toss-out-pile whatever I wanted - a shame our car is small and was already packed to the roof, otherwise I would have brought back more!

Then I moved on to looking at all my seed packets and sorted out the ones that could be put up into my propagators now (mostly herbs, flowers, spinach and cauli...from memory).

Watched my washing flapping in the breeze and getting gentle wafts of fragrance from my spring flowers (no it wasn't my perfume I was smelling hehe).

That reminded me of the Hamilton Gardens that we visited on holiday. We walked into one of the gardens and the gorgeous fragrances that hit us was amazing. Upon reading the garden name, it was called the Fragrant Garden.

That then had me thinking of the cool Permaculture Garden they also have set up...complete with a chicken in a tractor. I wish I'd taken more photos of the permaculture garden as they had a really neat set up.

OK, another "what's that" question. What is the reed stuff in the pond likely to be?