Jane Aston, painter.

Our lamb looks good and healthy. We moved the females back to the larger field last night and we had a call early this morning from our neighbour her mother had her head stuck through the wire fence.  They both spent the night out in the rain poor things. They seem ok though thankfully. I often feel a bit apprehensive about the welfare of the animals. The ducks have wandered off now. The goose is a bit jealous and chases them. The ducks have been here a week, very tame eating lots of slugs and sadly a frog this morning. 

I have lots of these self seeded around the place they are toxic to animals. Thankfully all the animals avoid plants that are toxic. Although things like brassicas and beans can also be dangerous to sheep so you have to watch out for the sheep jumping into the veg plots. 

Bed and bed head.

I have had so many slugs in this tiny bed. The broad beans I planted, thankfully I only planted half of them, were attracting so many slugs. I also had parsley which was almost completely eaten and my Echinacea are struggling. I have been going out with the ducks and finally after a week the plants are beginning to win against the now few slugs.

Beyond this is a strawberry bed, it's been weeded a lot since this was taken;

 I have decided to use some of the stone to make raised beds along here. I started yesterday just making the footings for some semi circles to create something so the plants can be higher up along the side of the house. Otherwise there is a lot of blank stone walls. I can't do much in each go as the stone is quite heavy, I think I need a sack truck to wheel the stone about. It's peeing down with rain toady otherwise I would include my starting point. 

The mild winter meant some plants didn't die off after self seeding in Autumn. These Cerinthe are lovely and have created a natural looking colony. Great for bees too;