Easter holidays - week one

We've had one week of the school holidays. Both H9 and R7 have had a cold/flu bug which knocked them off their feet for 24 hours. In between that the days have stretched long and impossibly sunny. The lambs grow fat in the field, wrens sing in the trees and the swallows have come home.

The tulips reach their long necks towards the sky.

Blackthorn bursts into blossom like snow.

I work in the garden as much as I can, sowing, potting on, planting out. This is one quarter of the polytunnel - the other three-quarters are equally packed.

I've cleared this border too. Note that the home made sweet pea wigwam from last year has sprouted leaves.

All the hard work is so I can see my most favourite flower - the diminutive dodecatheon.

I planted out three-quarters of the sweet peas and moved three lychnis. It's going to be a bold and brilliant border (or gaudy if I've got the combinations wrong!) Time will tell.

We cleared the Moor vegetable garden. I should have taken a 'before' photograph - the weeds were knee deep. In the foreground we have the remnants of the winter salads and kales, then white onions, fallow, garlic, maincrop potatoes, second early potatoes with broad beans, fallow and finally autumn raspberries at the far end. This is the second of the two vegetable gardens. The other has the rhubarb, soft fruit, hens, first early potatoes, red onions, herbs, spring salads and the polytunnel.

Huge clumps of king cups are in brilliant bloom on the Moor. They love the wet conditions.

Dandelion clocks are such beautiful structures.

Nico wonders if toes are food for lambs...

... and then shows just how cute he is. He's in the yard with his mum and another elderly ewe. They spend their days cropping the grass at the far end of the yard while Nico grows big and strong on his mother's milk and top up bottle feeds.