Growing things and gravelling

6 - 8 March 2020

We tend to walk round the garden two or three times a day - maybe it's displacement activity, given the alternative is shovelling more gravel!  Today we found lots of exciting developments:

 Blossom on the new almond trees.  We planted them partly because almonds are always the first trees to bloom in spring.

 Our first cauliflower, unexpectedly emerging from dense leaf cover.

 Back to the gravelling.  

Dave is filling barrows with large gravel - to go in the drainage ditch section near the house walls ...

 .. then back for tiny gravel which ...

 ... he deposits in heaps on the paving slabs, after I've fixed any wobbly ones, for me to sweep into the gaps.  The tiny gravel was recommended by the workforce as it should lock together in due course and hold everything firm.

 The sheep raiders (not ram-raiders, hehe), demonstrating why we have gates - it wouldn't take them long to eat everything we have planted.

 The table area outside the music room door, all gravelled up.

 Into the gravel, away from the main thoroughfares, I am planting little plugs of creeping thyme.  The idea is that it will grow between the paving slabs and soften the all-grey stoniness.

I made a small mistake by adding some tiny chips of water-retaining gel. 

 which, in one place, had obviously attracted (probably) vermin, as the plant and soil was all dug out.  It won't be pleasant for anything that has eaten the gel, I'm afraid.

 On another walk around - we find the first of the water-tank cover vines has pushed out through its wax dipping and is showing the first leaves.

 Me, brushing the gravel into the gaps, again, and again.  It turns out to be a large area of paving!

A small turnip harvest.  Lovely miniature turnips, great when saute'd.