A Good Weather Week and a Snowdrop Surprise

 Still no sign of winter here in Suffolk and several days have been better than forecast with more sun than the previous weeks and only a couple of frosty nights.

  And good weather made for a good week for me with my adventure into Cambridgeshire and some gardening done (and don't anyone dare say there's no such thing as bad weather, in my opinion any day that the sun doesn't shine in winter is Bad Weather!)

The Snowdrop Surprise was yesterday when there was a knock at the door and there stood a lady with a huge bag of Snowdrops in-the-green. I was so surprised and babbled a thank you. The lady is Jan, a blog reader and she must have worked out which village I live in and as she had lots of snowdrops she had very kindly brought me a bagful.

Look at these......absolutely beautiful and so many! Thank you so much Jan.

Straightaway I went out and dug some slots in the bit of lawn that's not going to be cut so often under the pear trees. I also put some out on the front lawn . The Anglesey Abbey snowdrops have been planted in bare soil in various places in the borders so between those and these new ones I should have a good show next year.

Blog readers are so kind.

Last Monday I'd  planned to go back to the WI that I used to go to but after reading the parish magazine for that village while I was visiting Brother-in-Law, and discovering the subject was Yoga my re-starting has been put off until March. I know I said that sometimes the subject is better than it sounds but honestly Yoga is something I can do without!

The bargain offer of patio/greenhouse portable bed with onion and shallot sets arrived. The bed's been fied with some rotted down turf that came off the new veg beds, then a piece of cardboard to discourage any of the roots to re-shoot and a bag of multi purpose compost on top. Onions don't need a lot of depth but another bag of compost might be needed on top before planting in March

The bed is a bit floppy so I've pushed one of the strawberry pots up against it to hold up the side. . 

I emptied another bag of multi-purpose compost onto one of the vegetable beds and tried to rake everything level.Then covered it with the plastic cloche tunnel - should help it warm up a bit. The other two beds need weeding and compost added to prepare them.

 

 Haven't had flowers on the table for weeks until I was in Aldi and saw these bunches of mixed tulips. Lovely colours - a late winter treat.

A Marshalls gardening catalogue arrived during the week and I'm debating about trying Alstromeria plants for the 99th time since leaving the smallholding or give up and just buy a bunch now and again. I think I will be tempted to buy some Osteospermum plants as the ones that the previous owners had planted last spring put on a wonderful show for months out in the front garden.  (BTW the snowdrops in-the-green for sale in the flower catalogue were even more expensive than those from Anglesey Abbey!)

This week I have been grateful for

• A surprise gift of snowdrops
• Watching Winter Olympics on TV
• Letters from penfriends in Canada and a Windy Scottish Island.
• Feeling better about driving further
• Good weather for gardening

Have a Good Weekend where ever you are

I shall be back Monday with my February library book haul

Sue