My plan in my food forest with my chop and drop schedule was to fell all the tagasaste trees first. These are trees that bloom in late winter, early spring and give the bees something to feed on as they start moving around again for the new season. Well thats what I had thought. A change of plan!! As I was chopping some of these trees I noticed that most of them were budding up and a few had started to bloom already. I don't want my bees to miss out on these surprise flowers so I'm now working on getting the big acacias down and will do the rest of the tagasaste once they have finished flowering. See how that works out!!
It has been really wet, cold and dreary here lately. I just get started doing something outside in a brief moment of sunshine and the next moment I have rain once again falling on my head. I think Oppy and Dusky enjoyed a short burst of warming sun, before all the clouds rolled in again.
Out in the front garden today it was pleasing to see my crop of garlic coming up. I had been a little worried about it as one of my chickens, who is always escaping her enclosure, was digging up this patch. I was then going back and replanting the cloves she had disturbed but one day I found her running away with one. How many had she pinched?? Now they have emerged I can see there are not too many gaps so pretty relieved by that.
I now have another issue of my mumma hen and all of her ten chicks roaming the front yard. I haven't been too worried to date as they hadn't seem to be disturbing too much but they are quickly getting bigger and more capable with their digging activities. My comfrey that I harvested and used as a mulch has been spread far and wide and I'm constantly worried they'll find my patch of greens and destroy that. Time to do something about it. I just need to extend a small coop by adding an extra enclosure that will keep them in more effectively. Haha - there's always something being added to my list of things to do!
As the weather really wasn't welcoming for outdoor activities for much of the day yesterday I decided a little greenhouse time was called for. I potted up some small seedlings and tidied up just a bit. I've started the hardening off process for some larger seedlings. This is something I've been very bad at in the past and have often just moved plants from the greenhouse to the garden resulting in poorly taking off plants. There is always room for improvement and old habits to change. Life is one big learning journey :)