Weather watch.

This weather really has put a spanner in the work when it comes to doing some gardening and writing my blog. We still have dirty great lumps of snow at the bottom of the hill, scooped up by the farmyard tractor over a week ago and originally reaching five foot high. This week we've had two days of blazing sunshine and a day and a night of torrential rain (plus, thunder, lightening and hailstones last Sunday evening). I've spent a few minutes cleaning the windows and brushing down the deck but there's nothing I can do in the garden as it's totally waterlogged. I have moved the little hen's run to a cleaner patch of ground and given them new sawdust for their house. Yesterday they enjoyed a whole day scrubbing around in the garden and dustbathing in the greenhouse. I bought some black grapes and cherry tomatoes that we shared with the hens. It's hilarious watching them  pick them up then run like mad for a quiet space to put them down and eat them. They look like lots of little clowns with those rotund red' noses'.This good food should  compensate any naughty grub that our neighbour Jack can't help but put out for them. Cake and pate seem to be his favourites!

Lunar was subjected to a bottom wash too. Now she is laying she seems to have developed a mucky bum so we scooped her up and plopped her up to her tummy into a sinkful of warm water. I held  her whilst Luke gently teased out her dirty down. She was unceremoniously popped outdoors once her ordeal was over and very disgruntled she was too but once she had dried out she was pristine again.

The first of our bulbs has emerged into the daylight. Early miniature Iris with a cheerful yellow dot in the middle of the ovate purple flowers give me hope that one day soon we will have a productive garden again.