I was gardening this afternoon

High time I had another session in the garden now that spring has sprung. And having been meithered by the guy at the football, who chats to me quite a lot about gardening and who has been telling me for about four weeks to plant my peas, I put the first row of them in this afternoon.

That involved digging over one of the plots that had spuds in last year and pulling out the weeds that had grown since I did it a week or 10 days ago, hoeing it to break up the lumps of clay, raking it over, adding some wood ash and hoeing that well in, and then putting in the first row of seeds. I bought a new packet this year because with all of the seeds from last year being out in the lean-to at -6°C and even colder over the winter, I'm not sure how they might have survived. Anyway, I put a new seed and a last-year's seed in the same seed hole to make sure that something might happen. I can always pull up any excess.

I've put one of my black bin-liner covers over the raised bed - to keep any frost out and to attract the heat of the sun. When I go for row 2 in a fortnight's time, I can check on the germination of the peas that I did today.

After that, I dug one of the raised beds that had had the peas and beans in last year. That was pretty much overgrown and it took some clearing. It looks quite good now, but I'll do it again tomorrow before I attack the bed next to it. It's in these two beds that the brassica - cabbage, cauliflower and sprouts - will be planted this year. Some of that can go in now and so I'll do a couple of rows tomorrow. Normally I would plant these seeds in small pots and let them grow in there but that's very time-consuming and I'm struggling for time. I'll just go for planting right from the beginning in the raised beds and let them take their chance.

I've also been clearing up around those raised beds - piles of thistles, brambles and nettles underneath the old grey Cortina and so I raked them out as well as much as I could. Now I'm back with the tingling hands again. I really must wear gloves when i'm ripping up nettles.

So that was this afternoon. This morning I had a pile of stuff to do on the computer but what with winding down after my efforts of the last few days I didn't do very much. I really need to get weaving as the stuff is piling up.

And talking about the efforts of the last few days, I had a letter from the Post Office at Pionsat. It was the receipt for the sending of my paperwork yesterday - and they did indeed manage to send it off in time if the datestamp is anything to go by. But not that it will do much good with some of the important stuff missing. GRRRRRRRR!