Walk on the Wild Side

Before I begin, I'd better explain the bumble bee pics. These were taken up in Cheshire while on hols at mum and dad's. The boyfriend has a habit of 'saving' bees in need; this particular one was looking rather lazy, in fact, a bit on the dead side. To get him back into health and enable him to continue his honey-making work, we fed him a little of the sweet stuff. He greedily guzzled the lot and was nowhere to be seen when we returned from our day out, so it must have done the trick. Well done hun - a great idea!

Back in Essex, I'd only been away for Easter weekend and everything appears to have grown immensely! The cabbages are trying to escape the fleece I threw over them to keep them warm; they really don't appreciate it, so I've had to remove it and hope the rabbits / foxes / slugs / snails / cats don't get to them! The broad beans are growing nicely, tall ones at the back, shorter ones at the front - I think the ones at the back have been helped by the warmth from the red brick wall.

Radishes have popped their heads through and I can't bear to thin them out, it seems so mean, so I've left them all to fight it out amongst themselves. No sign of the parsnips yet, but since the ones in the greenhouse took a month, I don't expect to see them for weeks yet. The carrots, despite being started I the greenhouse and transferred outside, seem to be thriving, but I guess the proof will be in the pudding, so to speak.

In the greenhouse, I've risked popping the carrots into a tub to see what happens - I quite fancy miniature carrots in a salad. The greenhouse parsnips are doing well, but I'm not sure what to do with them now. I put the potatoes into tubs in the greenhouse too, so we'll see how they get on, but I'm not normally very successful with potatoes; I don't even know which variety I've planted! They arrived in a little string bag without a name, I chitted them and planted them, so we'll see what happens.