Broad beans

Today is HOT. It is amazing what a difference that week makes, sub zero temperatures last Thursday night and the mid thirties today. I have taken off the flannel sheets and replaced them with light weight summery ones. Grace was most impressed yesterday with her fresh bed linen and said it felt like a motel bed. I must have tucked hers in extra tight. Hope has even requested a swim tomorrow but I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that.

In preparation for the heat and the even hotter and most likely from predictions, drier weather ahead, I have been spending the mornings in the orchard replenishing the mulch around the trees and berries. I am certainly getting a cheap workout.

I think this week I will mulch the vegetable garden too. The soil is warm and if left unmulched, it dries out quickly and in summer some plants would need more than one watering a day. I use lucerne mulch that I get from the same place we buy our lucerne hay which we feed the sheep when necessary. They usually have bales which for whatever reason are not suitable for stock feed but are more than adequate for the garden. The only drawback is that weeds are introduced to the garden that haven't been here before, Johnson grass and Thorn apple just to name two.

Today I have been processing beeswax. And slowly but surely, each time I do it I am for one thing getting better at it and for another, I am actually starting to enjoy the process. Thank goodness for that.

It is time for chickens to be fed and that's my job too.
Tracy