Sunday 16th May 10

A good day as I had no appointments or particular jobs to do... so I did a lot of garden work, including sorting out chopped hedge sticks so I can build the raised bed next to the fence in the orchard, weeding, riddling compost and soil for planters.

During part of the day the boys went into the garden and hit lots of plants with sticks, so I then had to spend quite a bit of time tidying this mess up. They were mainly Green Alkanet, which is a bit of a weed in our garden. I quite often pull a load up as it's good bulk for the compost heap, but I like some left as they are good for bees too. The smashed up plants I pulled up to compost, but the long tap root is difficult to remove and it always grows back. But smashed plants aren't good to look at.

So I also cleared up lots of plastic sacks, so it was a mainly tidying day.

I had a big pile of ground elder for tea, with the rems of the nutloaf and some noodles and stir-fried veggies, including the last Shiitake mushroom off the oak log in the garden.

In the evening I had a quite a lot of assorted admin to do, with Naked Bike Ride stuff, York in Transition stuff, and more. I enjoyed Countryfile as it featured a nice chap growing loads of Shiitake in Welsh woods.