Tomorrow I am going away for a few days with work so will not be blogging or gardening until I return.  I expect the beans will be grateful to be free of my anxious pacing in the potager for a while!

This week is going to be pretty stressful because of various work things that are far too dull to go into here.  Suffice to say that my tummy is in knots.  It’s not pretty.

As the weather is so utterly gorgeous I have been combating that stress by enjoying the sunshine and sticking my hands in the soil.  I have sown carrots, beetroot and parsnips and I found the process to be surprisingly calming.  I should, of course, be sitting down with a file on my lap preparing for a big day tomorrow.

Does it still count as work if I read outside in the sunshine with a cold beer?  Maybe not.  But it will, at least, help me to keep my anxiety under control.

Having built our sturdy bean frame earlier this weekend, and allowed our little pots of bean seedlings to harden off over the last few days I today transplanted them into their final positions. They’re already starting to twist themselves round the canes and I can’t wait for them to keep twirling heavenwards. I do like height in the garden.

As usual I have planted Neckar Gold and Blauhilde as I enjoy them so much. Well, if it aint broke… You can see that I have sprinkled some slug pellets to afford them some protection. I don’t like doing this, but our garden is overrun with slugs and snails. And these pellets are wildlife friendly.

[Aside: How can anything possibly be called wildlife-friendly when it is designed to kill slugs? Don’t slugs count as wildlife? Or maybe it’s got something to do with how they kill ‘em. The pellets flirt seductively with the snails and offer to take them out for coffee, perhaps?]

As a further precaution I have sown some ‘insurance’ seeds. I have had too many experiences of total seedling munch-ness or destruction by late frost to risk ending up sans haricots. If I have pots of seedlings I don’t need I can always give them away.  I can be nice like that.

Climbing beans - so many opportunities to feel good about myself!

Once home, we allowed ourselves a lazy brunch and then I set to in the garden. I wanted company, but in spite of his unstinting helpfulness, gardening is really not Owen’s thing so it was likely that I would end up out there on my own. Sometimes that’s just how I like it - time to myself with nothing in particular to think about except the weed I’m pulling up. But not today. Today I wanted company and an available bit of brawn for when the heavy lifting started.

So Owen spent the afternoon reading the paper while I worked. From time to time when I asked him he lifted this or moved that. Once we’d reached beer o’clock he very kindly got me a nice glass of pink cava and sparkling water to keep me moving smoothly. All in all it worked very well. And if I got a bit cranky by the end of the day and resentful that I had been working while he had been relaxing (at the weekend? How awful!) well, that was just the fatigue talking. As it turns out, I found the day relaxing too and it was lovely to have my best pal there for laughs and cuddles.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll let you know what I did…

The prospect of fine weather and a weekend in the garden makes me feel like it might actually be spring.

After voting today (a traditional May Day activity, I think you’ll find) I went for a walk in the sunshine with my gardening assistant, secateurs in hand. We wandered down near the canal and found a very convenient fallen tree, desperate to give up its broken branches to a higher purpose. My peas now have suitable support - though I don’t know if it will be enough to save them as they really look quite sad.

Still, underneath that metal mesh (a shelf from my plastic greenhouse) I today discovered more pea germination so perhaps all is not yet lost…

My one concern is that I am struggling to find twiggy sticks to act as support for them. All our neighbours’ gardens have mature trees and are probably full of unwanted twigs and sticks of every shape and size. None are within reach of our garden - which is normally a blessing as we don’t want all that shade. But it does leave us short of suitable pea support. It would be disheartening to fail to pea because of a lack of sticks.

I wonder if a walk along the canal will prove helpful on the twig front. If not, perhaps Mrs Fox could be persuaded to play fetch!

The sun was warm enough to make for a pleasant day, but not so hot that lying in the shade with a cold beer was preferable to weeding and digging. Well, no more than usual. By the end of the weekend we had rendered the entire garden halfway respectable, so it might be possible to have visitors in the garden this year and not end up blushing while they politely ignore the mess. Not a bad bit of work overall, and it felt like relaxation.

I love spring.

Instead I decided to use the bathroom as a hide and sit with my camera poking out of the window waiting to snap the birdies as they feed. The birds had other ideas and came over all camera shy, but this chap (or chap-ess, rather as I think it’s a vixen) was quite happy to stand and pose.

I’m pretty sure this is the same fox we saw before, though I can’t be certain. Certainly she/he seems very much at home round here.

After inspecting the planting I did yesterday (a few peas and some rocket) Foxy looked right at me and my camera and then hopped off out over the compost bins and out of the garden.

So much for bird watching.