A different sort of day today, quite far Removed from the little by little approach I have taken so far with the 100 day project.  It has been a beautiful day of warm sun up here and although I did an hour of my Spanish I could not bear to be inside for the two hours I had planned.  It will cool down soon enough, tomorrow by the look of the weather forecast, so today was for being outside.

Ian has been repairing the raised beds in the kitchen garden.  This is a job which takes time and there was such a lot of weeding and garden work to do down there I abandoned the cutting garden for now and spent my time today weeding the beds he had finished so that we could work together.

One of these beds, the third one along that you can see here, is full of peony, sweet cicely and hellebores.  It has also been invaded by the ever present creeping buttercup.  I removed loads of it into the pink wheelbarrow.  Then I inspected the mint bed, the second one along.  This has chives at either end and six different varieties of mint, from culinary mint, spearmint to basil and lime mint.  I haven't decided whether to empty the beds and replant them from pieces of mint as it is important that the varieties don't grow together.  When they intermingle they lose their distinct flavours and become a rather muddy tasting general purpose mint.


It was good to see the beds looking crisp and clear again.


And the paths are swept.  The blossom on the apple trees at the far end will be out soon.  All day long the swallows whizzed in and out of the stone pigsty and out over the valley the buzzards soared lazily on the rising thermals.

A day to savour.