It’s done! It’s all finished! After weeks of work the chicken house is ready and waiting. The frame is up, the house is finished, the mesh has been dug into the ground and the roof is on. It even has a magic egg on it that the boys hammered in as the final piece. I’ve been looking for woodchips to put on the ground of the run but can’t find them anywhere. We’ve just got to set it all up for the chickens before we collect them on Saturday morning and we’re all so excited but also quite worried! It’s a little like expecting your firstborn all over again, only they lay eggs. Or we hope they will! We hope they’ll settle in and we hope they’ll like us! We hope we’ll know how to look after them well as everything I’m reading isn’t staying in my head any more! We hope they’ll be happy and we hope we’ll have lots of lovely, fresh eggs to eat.

I’ve made a start on sowing seeds in a propagator which have already been pricked out into larger pots. The children have also sown some tomato plants. We’ve got them everywhere! I hope we’ll at least get one tomato from the vast collection of plants that are growing on the windowsills. Just one single, solitary tomato will make me feel like I’ve achieved something in my first attempt at growing something that isn’t a child. It’s amazing how nervous you can feel when you’re holding a packet of seeds! I wonder if others felt the same when they first started? There seems to be so much information and so much to learn about what to do and what each plant needs. I will not give up though! Because you’re all watching me.

The raised bed that Michael made has now been filled with compost and covered up to warm the soil. I’ve also finally planted the plum tree that he bought me for my birthday, planted two blueberry bushes into pots of ericaceous compost and planted some broad beans in the garden. We haven’t yet set up the surprise raised bed but we’ll squeeze it into some part of the garden. We’ve also put out a request on Freecycle for any gardening equipment anyone might not want.

I’ve also been busy in the kitchen trying out a couple of new recipes. One of which was a Double Chocolate Danish cake which was lovely. So lovely that it didn’t last more than a day even though I made two of them! I also had a go at making strawberry jam yesterday and despite my worries that it wouldn’t set thickly enough, turned out to set so thickly that you can’t spread it! I think I’ll add less lemon juice next time and see if that solves the problem.