Monday 28th March 2022: I spent most of the day doing bits and pieces, pottering, call it what you will. I got a few plants in the ground in various places, watered some of the pots and watered the greenhouse but apart from that nothing major. There was plenty I could have got done but was a little tired by lunchtime, quick sit down and a rest then some more pottering, that’s my day, potty 🤪
Tuesday: I can’t even remember what I did for the first part of the morning 🤷♀️ but probably the usual jobs such as eggs, rubbish, washing up, social media posts lol. Mid morning I checked the post box and I had some plug plants delivered, some I had forgotten I ordered 🙄 One lesson I really have to learn is writing down the orders and keeping the book with me at all times so I can double check when I think ‘ooo look, I think I will order those’, doubling or tripling on flower orders is not a good thing 😂 These are chrysanthemums and I am aware I have others on order, they are perennial however and so I will have them year on year. I can propagate from them to increase stock and either use that stock or sell it on so it’s ok, that’s what I am telling myself anyhow 🤪 As soon as I unpacked them I made a coffee and went into the greenhouse to pot them up, they will stay in there until this cold snap moves on and then I will put them in the cold frames until the danger of frosts has passed when they will be planted out. These are early to mid season chrysanthemums, I also have some mid to late ones on order, most are spray chrysanthemums which will be fillers but some are single bloom and beautiful shapes and colours.
It is quite a bit colder today, the sun has gone and we have grey cloud and drizzle, by Thursday we will have minus temps overnight and even the threat of some snow 🙄 It’s the see saw season with swings of up 10 degrees in each direction at the moment.
Lunchtime some bare roots shrubs arrived so I soaked them in water for an hour before going outside to plant them up. There should have been five but in fact there were six 😁 I planted up four of them in various areas, one out in the front paddock where I have some other small shrubs trying to grow. Another on the edge of the orchard area, one near the pirate ship and one down in the difficult area of the bottom bed, should do ok there but veg don’t. The remaining two I potted up and put in the cold frame area where they will stay until they form some good roots and then will go out for sale. Then I decided to sow some runner beans and some dwarf French beans, these will be grown in the greenhouse for quite a while before they are ready to go out. After that a bit of pricking out, Ami Majus, which is a great filler flower a bit like cow parsley. I will direct sow some seeds for that as well but as always I like to hedge my bets and get some started under cover. I can definitely see me thinking about bigger under cover areas in the future, I am filling up every available space I have at the minute 😂
Wednesday: Very much colder today than last week, today I decided not to go outside and do any work, I stayed in the warm instead. I spent the best part of the morning baking cakes 🍰 two Madeira cakes, one chocolate and almond and one everyday fruit cake, I also made up some batches of Yorkshire pudding mix to freeze for the times when we don’t have many eggs. The reason I did that is because we have so many eggs that I really need to do some thing useful with them. I am trying as hard as I can to sell as many as I can but with all the pullets laying like crazy, we have a lot so might as well turn them into something for the freezer. Went outside early evening it is positively Baltic 🥶
Thursday: Today should have been the highlight of the year so far for me but it wasn’t, gutted does not come close. On Monday I tested positive for covid and today I was supposed to be going on the course day with Sarah Raven but am unable to go 😭🤬 Yeah, it sucks, worse there is no cancellation policy for covid, worse still they didn’t even acknowledge my email to say I couldn’t attend.
The day got worse as one of the Turkey ladies has died overnight so now Ted only has one lady friend. It is even colder today than yesterday and we have had quite a few snow flurries on and off through the day though none of it has settled so far. One good thing that happen though, the card reader arrived today so I can at least take card payments in the future plus get some QR codes up and running.
Going back to the covid, that is obviously why I felt quite tired last week, I also had a very sore throat (but didn’t know that was a symptom) I tested on Friday because of the way I felt but it was negative so I thought I just had a bug. Sunday evening I had a really bad headache that I still had on Monday morning so I thought I would test again. I checked the test after 10 mins, nothing, five minutes later it had a faint line 😳 Because I am on immune suppressants I have a specially issued PCR test that I then had to do and send off, that result came back positive as well on Tuesday morning 😩 However by Tuesday the illness seemed to have ‘broken’ and I had nothing but by this time the wheels had started in motion and so I was awaiting a phone call from the next stage of the chain. That was a call from a Dr from infection control 🤪 we had a discussion about when the illness started, what symptoms I had and how I was now feeling, the upshot was that he didn’t think I needed the anti viral medication that I could get to lessen the effect of the virus. I agreed with him, it seems that my immune system has done the job after all which is good news 😁 I need to watch out for the next couple of weeks apparently as breathing complications can appear well after the virus has gone 🤷♀️ Today I was amazed to find in the post box a replacement PCR test kit, I am impressed that the system they put in place works exactly as they say it will, good job, well done 👏
Friday: Still testing positive but all I have is a ‘fuzzy’ head and I often have that anyway 😂 I thought we might wake up to snow this morning, yesterday late afternoon and evening there were flurries of snow some of them pretty intense but they haven’t amounted to anything and the sun is shining beautifully this morning though it is still cold and frosty.
We had the final window fitted today so now they all match lol, before it was even in I was looking at decoration ideas. It is the spare room and was last done around 8 years ago, now a new smaller window has been fitted it will need some making good and so might as well be upgraded at the same time 😁 I love a project 🥰
I potted up some scented pelargonium that I had ordered. I am not a geranium type ordinarily but scented ones, yes please 😁 If you are ever planning a sensory garden then you have to include these, apple, lemon, mint, all the wonderful smells you can get with these little gems are amazing.
I have been watching Bridgerton 🥰 Shelley said to me ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen it’ so I thought I would see what it was all about. Well I love it, it is multifaceted, relatable on so many levels and comparable even to modern society, social media in particular. It is refreshingly easy to watch, witty and the characters are likeable, beautiful and downright handsome. Scandal, love, unrequited love, deception, plus the costumes and sets are perfectly gorgeous, what more could you want ❤️ I think writer was particularly clever, a large family of boys and girls spanning a good few years in ages will give you reams of storylines for future series and I for one cannot wait for the next series 😁
Saturday: John spent the day taking down old fencing, mowing the lawn and getting a bit of shopping. I spent the morning in the greenhouse, moving things around, moving plants over to the poly tunnel, putting some things out into the cold frame, I actually don’t know exactly what but we did do some things 🤪
Sunday: Finally having negative tests mean I can go out, I know you can anyway these days but I wouldn’t because I didn’t feel it was very responsible so I stayed put. I wanted to go to the diy shop to get some particular flowers that the website said they had, they didn’t 😏 so we went to the garden centre to see if they had them, they didn’t and worse we thought we would get breakfast but they were not cooking 😏 called in to see my brother on the way back for a coffee and he said go to this other shop they have loads of bargains, they had sold out 😏 not a terribly productive morning on the plant buying front 😂 Called in to see Mum and Ken to wish her a belated happy birthday and then back home. I did pick up some half price lily bulbs so I planted those when I got back, I also spent a good couple of hours in the greenhouse pricking out tomato seedlings (pretty big seedlings 🙄) and potting them up. I potted on some crazy daisies, Californian poppies and some China asters. Meanwhile John cleaned out the hens at the front and the back.
I took my very first card payment now we have a card machine 😁 hopefully that will be a useful addition, since covid people don’t carry much cash anymore. I need to set up the QR codes for another easy way to pay.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 