The view from the tree house / platform

You get a much better view with the roof off the tree house. 

Bluebells!

And garden flowers. 

Butterflies!

Two butterflies were seen today - an orange tip and a peacock. Lovely. 

Today was pruning the tree houses day. The roof on the tree house has not worked well - I thought I would be able to prune it with a roof on but it is too difficult. So we are back to a tree house platform. 

And the ground floor tree house got pruned too. 

And when it is all shredded it doesn't take up much space. 

I must be getting old.

I spent a few happy minutes this morning reading the post which concerned my pension! Six months to go but good to know there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

Then back to what I laughingly call work. 

The long pond looks better after its clean up. 

Then work on preparing the new flowerbed. A rotavator is a Good Thing.

Then cementing in an edging...

And repairing the lower dam with the surplus.

Finishing the waterworks.

Last of the ponds now tidied up all the way down to the summer house pond. 

Canadian visitors.

These two flew at breakfast this morning. They only stayed for ten minutes before heading off up the valley.

Kate and I worked on the pond today clearing the surface so the swallows and house martins can fly in for water. 

The rest of the long pond also got cleared - what a pity we can't eat this stuff as it grows so well!

Still it makes good green manure. 

The primrose path -  although it is actually celandines. 

The first swallow of Spring.

We saw our first swallow over the garden today. We spent a weekend with Helen and Steve looking at all the wedding photo so and videos. But now we are back in glorious sunshine so work begins again. 

First task is to build some extra shelving in the polytunnel to keep the seedlings up out of the way of rats and mice. 

Then it was time to start the spring clean of the ponds.

But there is still time to spot the little beauties. 

Spring has sprung a leak.

Not gardening weather as the rain has returned. 

One indoor gardening job got done - preparing the polytunnel and greenhouse for plantings.

The rest of the time has been spent working on a building for the layout and making trees!

A day in bed.

Or beds. Vegetable beds that is. 

The onion bed now has netting, has been rotavated and onions planted, both red and white. 

The next bed is a plants bed and has just been repaired as has the next one. It has also been made ready for wire netting. 

The next one has suffered badly and the base section has rotted so that will need replacing. But the next one has been tidied up, repaired, rotavated and covered. This one will have the pumpkins and squashes so won't need netting. 

Autumn bonfire in Spring.

This bonfire was meant to happen in November but the weather was so bad it has only just dried out enough to set fire to.

Still very smokey!