Raking it in.

Well.  I tried last year, and failed.  I thought I'd try again.  Raking up the leaves is a pretty tall order if you happen to have an orchard.

It's also not that straightforward when you have children.  They do sometimes like attention.
What complicates things further is the chicken population.  When they insist on going up to your carefully piled leaves and kicking them all over the place...

... you start fantasising about pies.  (Not really, I love our hens!)
But this was as far as I got before Little Boy demanded my attention, and the sun went down (thus the different exposure - my phone camera struggled with the light)

Not bad.  Probably nudging a couple of hours work.  Saves going to the gym (and I can't really take the boys with me to the gym, but I can have them in the garden!)

It's the fork that counts.

I don't know how I can joke about it really.  It's actually quite sad.

I was tidying up the front bed this morning, when disaster struck.  Either the ground is too hard, or I am.  Or perhaps a combination of the two.  Either way, the fork wasn't up to the battle, and gave way.  It was a nice border fork too.  Ok, so the tines weren't exactly in line any more, and the top of the handle could pinch your hand something rotten, but it still had a good few years service under its belt. 
The silver lining is that I now have a large hand fork (or will, once I've separated the handle completely) as well as a dibber perfect for planting leeks.
What's more, I could also get a nice new fork from Christmas.  It is approaching apace, after all.

That time of year again.

Cannot.

Get.

Enough.

Of.

This.

Amazing.

Tree.

Chickens!

Which came first?
The chickens.  Obviously.  But before them, came the coop.

This is in the orchard (I'm hoping there aren't any foxes reading this...)
The chickens came from Highfield Happy Hens.

They were transported in potato boxes in the back of the car...

With veg trays for lids.  Apparently that's luxury compared to what some people take them home in.  I thought it was nice to set the bar high :)
They were then released into the coop...

They had a little potter around and seem to be happy with their new accommodation.  They arrived last Thursday, and we've so far had four eggs from them.  I expect production will pick up the more settled they get.

Big boy is so far the only one to have sampled them, but I intend to try one out soon!  Still don't really know what we're doing in terms of how to look after the chickens, and am hoping that our ignorance doesn't kill them off...

Gazania

Seedy business.

What's the difference between seed envelopes and dinner money envelopes?
Well, the most obvious thing seems to be the price...  I ordered a pack of each.  At the time of ordering, the seed envelopes were £3.90, while the dinner money envelopes were £3.99.  For the extra nine pence, you got 80 more envelopes.  Now, I have to admit that the seed ones do seem to be a bit higher quality - more robust (I suppose a dinner money envelope usually only has to last until lunchtime...)
But anyway, I started using them today.  I collected some lavender seed, some seed from a nice flower (probably technically a weed, but who cares?!) that sprouted along the drive, and a whole bunch of poppy seed.  They're in the dinner money envelopes. 
Other stuff that's been done in the garden recently includes:
Harvesting the carrots (they were purple),
Harvesting some spuds,
Trimming leaves off tomato plants (helps the fruit ripen, apparently),
Potting the fuchsia up into bigger pots,
Cutting back the lavender,
Pruning the wisteria,
Turning the compost,
Watching the sweet peas die back and waiting for an abundant harvest of seeds.
Dead heading the sunflowers out the front,
Emptying all the dead pots of compost (failing seedlings and the like) into a big trug, with the idea of planting a fig tree in it and sinking it into the ground (apparently they grow really big if unchecked)
And probably other stuff too...

Compost

Just a quick compost post.  To be honest, I thought the compost was a bit of a write-off.  It didn't seem to be doing what I thought it should.  For some time, I'd been meaning to turn the compost, as that apparently speeds up the process.  (Monty Don said, 'any gardener who goes to the gym doesn't turn their compost often enough.)  Well, today I got around to it.  (Strictly speaking, I started yesterday, but genuinely did less than 20 seconds before being called away...)

j

It's quite a large compost area.  There are three pairs of pallets, on end, which create two compost areas.  The idea was that they were 'year 1' and 'year 2' areas, to allow the garden waste time to do its thing (become compost!)  I've pretty much used up all the compost on the right hand side, and the left hand side is the stuff that's been added over the course of this year.  I therefore figured I'd 'turn' the compost from the left side into the right.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.  Although the surface (top photo) doesn't look like much is happening, as soon as you dig down a bit, you find what could reasonably be mistaken for compost! 

Some of the bits are still a bit big, so it might have to be sieved, depending on where it's to be applied, but all in all, I was pretty chuffed with the quality of it.

So this'll be applied liberally around the garden in the coming months.  Some for winter mulch, the rest of spring feeding.  Yay.