Birdsong

Our hedges are alive with birds. Everywhere there is the sound of birdsong and little birds flitting largely unseen amongst the hedgerows. When they appear I can see there are wrens, a variety of tits, sparrows and on the lawn and borders blackbirds, thrushes, magpies, pigeons and of course the pheasant who appeared unusually camera shy today.

Gardening

I've been doing lots of gardening this week to take advantage of the marvellous weather. Today we put in another row of broad beans and planted chillies, tomatoes and sweet peas into pots to start indoors and soaked the seeds of my courgettes and squash ready to plant tomorrow.

Butterflies

The first lot of butterflies have appeared in response to all this sunshine. I have seen a number of peacock butterflies and this one decided to pose for me next to the back door (but not on it where he would have looked stunning against the blue).

Getting there

Our guest living room is starting to look ready to receive guests! This is just as well as we have relatives arriving this week, Jan and Andy travelling from Suffolk (and staying with friends elsewhere in Derbyshire) and Rory who is stopping with us.

Inspection

After all my digging 'the foreman' just has to come and check that I've done things correctly. Judging from her expression possibly I haven't. Some days she and Dave give me exactly the same look!

Sheep seat

This little lamb was actually sitting on top of her mother - not so much a sheep stool as a sheep armchair. I guess mum preferred this to when her offspring was actually standing on her!

Digging and weeding

Today we had more lovely weather and I spent my whole day gardening and so now I can barely move! I managed to weed all four plots and turn over the soil which the winter rain and snow had compacted. Dave then planted out three rows of second early potatoes into my carefully marked positions! When I took this photo I could see that all the hard work had been worth it as the garden looks really good, enhanced by the fact that Dave cut the lawn for the second time this season.

Washing line

I spent a while this morning cleaning the rotary drier so that I can hang my washing outside again. Although Easter Monday may have seemed a strange day to do it I got a number of loads dry very quickly as there was the perfect combination of sun and breeze.

Our Hill Farm Easter egg hunt

Tom had been very excited about the prospect of our first ever Easter egg hunt, but when he heard that I hadn't made up clues and had only hidden the dozen eggs he predicted he'd find them all in a few minutes ... an hour later and he was still hunting! I hadn't anticipated that the event would be such fun to watch! Of course it helped that we had such wonderful weather (but still I put the eggs in plastic bags). I devised a good method for the hunt with two eggs in each bag and whichever couple found them first had to take their egg and replace the bag and remaining egg for the other pair to find. Of course there was the temptation to hide them somewhere slightly harder to see ......

Simnel Cake

Another tradition for me is making a Simnel Cake. I always did this for Mothering Sunday but in recent years I've baked it for Easter instead when everyone is usually around to enjoy it. The tradition is that there are 11 marzipan balls to represent the disciples and no ball for Judas because of his betrayal of Jesus. As it is much easier to divide the mixture into 12 Joe always benefits from the spare one!