On weather and frogs

I spotted this cow parsley looking all fresh and newly unfurled and spring-is-on-its-way-y at the allotment yesterday, so took some quick photos (just before I yanked it up by its roots and added it to the compost pile). Is this more evidence for global warming, I wonder (actually I have no clue when cow parsley is supposed to start flowering). Either way, I was glad I had waited until the last day of the holidays to get down there as I spent a glorious couple of hours in the sunshine: by the time I came home the plot was looking uncharacteristically neat.

I had a small dilemma: should I make the most of my child-free time to listen to my nice new Christmas ipod, or should I stay unplugged and enjoy the birdsong and whatnot. In the end I plugged myself in but compromised by keeping the volume low enough to hear the birds singing and the clock chiming, and listened to the wigglywigglers podcast to keep it topical. I pulled the netting back over my purple-sprouting broccoli, which is starting to look pleasingly purple, and dug some Jerusalem artichokes for a gratin later in the week. I then started hefting about the bits of carpet we laid a year ago, to uncover what should now be weed-free (or at least relatively less weedy) ground and cover up the weediest bits again. I have some plans in progress, so if you are really interested watch this space. I also uncovered lots of slug eggs – left them out for Mr Robin – and an army* of frogs. I knew Cameron was bringing the girls down to visit so, once I’d realised there were 10 or more frogs in two colonies** under the edge of one of my carpets, I left it in place until they arrived, expecting them to be interested. Which they weren’t particularly (but Cameron and I were very interested indeed so I was glad he saw them).

*This is a proper collective noun for frogs, I checked.
**And this is another.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 2:17 pm and is filed under allotment life, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.