Well, the big news from the Magic Garden this week is that the tulips have finally tulipped!
The long bed by the domes is finally full of colour, and drinking in the sunshine. The white tulips are also popping in the antique French tubs that I laboriously dragged down the hill, to sit in front of my Wendy House which we’ve christened Bwythyn Bach (little cottage in Welsh). I’ve got two cosy hanging eggs chairs in there, and it’s my secret place to go with anyone who needs a private chat – privacy can be a bit of a hard-to-come-by commodity here on the farm, since we all live and work here…
The pond sits in a state of hushed anticipation as we wait for all the tadpoles and toad-poles to hatch out. Water Boatmen scull around upside-down, looking hungry, looking forward to the big event. The neat necklace of toad spawn is looking different today. Here’s how it looked before:
And here’s how it looks today:
You can see that all the clear gooey stuff gluing the eggs together has – dissolved? Been eaten? Hard to say…and the little toad-poles are longer and wiggly-looking, no longer looking like tiny round beads. There seem to be a lot fewer of them – I guess someone is already munching them up, and it’s a race to the finish line to see if they start moving in time to run away from their predators! I had to resist the urge to brush a Water Boatmen away from the poor little pre-toads. So hard not to take sides…
The sweet pea teepees have been built out of silver birch, braided into helter skelters, and the sweet peas have been planted out.
The three glass domes are busting at the seams with herbs, tomato seedlings, climbers, pelargoniums, beans, melons and cucumbers, all waiting to be chucked into their final growing positions. Roll on spring!
Hugs from the garden,
Shann
