Wednesday

Good morning, everybody.  It looks as if today will be as lovely as yesterday.  All warm and sunny and another cushions-out-and-eat-in-the-garden day.  I'm loving this weather as I think we all are and it is something to be treasured, even if it has set off my hay fever earlier than usual.

After the SW Zoom meeting (and very helpful it was too), I set up in the garden, had my breakfast and then set to with the chilli pepper seedlings.  Goodness, they are slow growing; I really should have sown them much earlier.  However, they are nice and strong and now I have nine little pots with healthy seedlings and the race will be to the strongest really.  I will probably use two, maybe three, Beth says she will take one and I will offer the others around to friends.
I found I had ten runner bean seeds left and they are also in their own pots so they are easy to plant out without disturbing their roots too much.  Again, if I don't need them all (fingers crossed), Beth says she will have what's left.
I also potted on the parsley (also very slow growing) and started pinching out side shoots on the tomatoes as they are all cordon style.  I can see that will be a daily duty if I am to keep on top of that.  I also noted some ripeness amongst the strawberries and look . . .

The first strawberry of the year!  It didn't in the least go with the egg custard but I only popped it on for 'display' and ate it separately.  It was sheer bliss!
And there will be two or three more by this evening!

Down the allotment, more runners are through but some evil thing is nibbling the tops.  The slug pellets are now down!  Grrrrrr.
The potatoes are looking good, as is the corn, and there are flower bugs on the broad beans so now I'm on the look out for blackfly to zap!

There are a few things on today.
I have personal training at twelve.  Lindsey is planning to open up her garden for one to one personal training soon, after advice from some local council body, weather permitting.  That will be nice.

Then, not quite so happy, it's my Uncle Tom's funeral at two.  Tom died about three weeks ago and, of course, neither Dad or I feel it is wise to attend.  The funeral company will be filming it and putting it out as a web cast which Dad and I both hope to watch live.  It seems perfectly straightforward - just click on a link and enter username and password.  It's frustrating not to be able to support Diana (Mum's much younger sister) more but there you go - difficult times.

After that I feel I will need to get out in the fresh air for a while so will probably go for a walk as Beth has assumed watering duties today.

I'll probably also get the bed changed today and make the most of the good drying weather.

So that's today.  Goodness knows when I can publish this post; Blogger seems to be having a temper tantrum and is refusing to save and I had to go all round the houses to get the photos on.  I'll post as soon as it lets me and, in the meanwhile, I will copy and paste into a Word document, just in case I lose the whole thing.
Take care, stay well and have a great day.  xx

A bit later.
Hmmm, it wouldn't save and wouldn't save so I couldn't publish.   I wondered if I'd exceeded my 'space' allowance.  I went back and deleted some old posts (quite sad as they are a record of past teaching days), removed the above photos and tried to get them on the usual way through the insert images button and, lo and behold, I could and now it is saving OK.