No, I didn't go to a St. Patrick's Day parade today. I actually never did. I worked in the garden and enjoyed the great spring weather there. I was out again there in the last days, and it's so good after the long winter inside.
We had the coldest January and driest February since so many years. Well, I didn't notice the latter when I walked over the sheep's pasture then, it still felt like a huge sponge, and despite that I tried to make myself as light as possible, every step left a deep mark. We have this waterlogged gley soil, where water can only evaporate later in the year, it doesn't drain. As Michael Harding put it in his column in the Irish Times last week: "Leitrim is a floating sod of daub".
Now, whilst the old trees around our house make a good shelter belt against wind, they also cast a lot of shadow over the garden. They send down lots of debris, needles and leaves, and moss grows everywhere in this damp and shady atmosphere. This has to be cleaned up after winter. Part of it I did today.
I've sown tomatoes in the house a while ago, other seeds meanwhile, and there will be more to come. The tomatoes and peppers have their first leaves. It's always exciting to sow seeds, and wait for the little seedlings to emerge. I'm also every year amazed about the various distinctive shapes of the seeds of different plants, as well as about the shapes of their first leaves when they appear.
Those little tomato seedlings: you wouldn't believe that they will grow into huge plants in the tunnel and bear loads of tomatoes later in the year - well, last year there weren't loads. We had no summer. Lets see how this garden year turns out...
Here is a new fabric. It looks the same on both sides:
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