Thursday 15th April 10

A good day. Up not too early and got some paperwork done, cheques into envelopes and into the post box.

And then had a busy day in the garden, getting lots done, a bit more shredding and lots of tidying, riddled the last of a builder's bag of very mature compost, bagged it up into about 20 bread bags and 14 carrier bags. All the big bits... sticks, chunks of bark, etc, went back on the new heap. I did a bit of stacking, very green alder logs which I've split to get them dry quickly.

At 3pm, my composting friend Jo came round to borrow both my Rotasieves, as her son is doing a thing with Scouts and they need to riddle lots of compost, in preparation for planting seeds.

I worked in the garden til 6pm and came in for pasta with broccoli and carrot, with home-made tomato soup as a sauce on top. Very welcome and filling.

Then later, something I've been looking forward to doing for ages... I planted the first seeds of the year. I filled about 50 toilet roll inners with home-made seed compost with a spoon... it took quite a long time, but I did then 'in situ' in a stainless steel catering dish, the sort used in ban maries to serve hot food from,which I rescued from a skip years ago. The bog-rolls were put into it, all up against each other, and the growing medium carefully spooned in. Then I put a pea-bean in each one, and a bit of seed-compost on top. Then I got water from the water butt and gave them a good dowsing from the base, so the water soaks up to the beans. I love planting seeds. And especially these climbing beans as they are just about my favourite crop. The toilet rolls will be planted in 4 to 6 weeks without disturbing the roots.

I'll do the pumpkins and squash over the weekend, and sweetcorn, brassicas, and I don't know what else. A lovely time of year. Let's hope the Icelandic volcano doesn't affect the summer temperatures too much... it could make a cool summer. I've enjoyed today partly as I was pleased the volcanic ash has closed all the airports today. One comment on facebook was that Gaia is getting her revenge....