Now its Spring

That first post outlined stuff from the winter.
Now its spring.

Tulips are flowering, wallflowers too but despite the rest of England basking in sunny sunshine we've had a week of cool cloudy weather but importantly... no rain. Its been very dry for two weeks and new sowings, young plants have stopped.

It'll rain soon and everything will get flattened as growth is sappy, soft and a bit floppy.

The chickens are laying like crazy, however, which is a good thing.

Cold

It was a cold winter up north.
Despite the milder winters we are having generally, January and February were bone numbingly cold at times on the NE coast. Outside jobs in the garden or up at the allotment had to be fitted into milder spells as fingers lapsed quickly into uselessness in the freezing conditions. A ring of steel around the allotment was top of the agenda this winter as the rabbit population decimated many crops last year. They even ate my autumn sown broad beans (a crop they disdain normally) during a particularly cold snap in December. Once the allotment was enclosed I could see a noticeable drop in their activity and the path they had worn flat across the potato bed quickly disappeared.

We didn't have much snow but that is not necessarily a measure of winter severity, especially near the sea. Take it from me, spring was cold and late.