Beltaine greetings.

Today is supposed to be the start of summer, after the weather that we have had for the past week this is very hard to believe. Last week, the temperatures were in the mid 20's c, then Thursday it all changed, hard frost every night for a week. We had been lulled into a  false optimism, courgettes, French beans and sweet corn had all been planted out, only to die of frost bite, potatoes have all been burnt, even the ones in the tunnel, this will set them back but not kill them, however the courgettes and French beans are beyond the kiss of the sun, they are dead. Even the Kiwi vines in the tunnel have been affected, but they will survive. Things that we would have expected to have suffered are fine,

the first two strawberries were picked today and were very sweet, with lots more to come in a few days time.

Carrots that had been doing so well have suffered  from slug attack, this included a heritage variety which was rather pricy, unfortunately there were very few seeds in the packet so we will have to make do with Autumn King. Slug traps have now been laid, better late than never I suppose.

  
Bluebells in the woods are now in bloom and

we have a lovely bank of violets in flower, the primroses continue to brighten up the banks.

Daffy duck, our favourite Muscovy duck is sitting well on her clutch of eggs, she has taken her sitting very seriously this year, hopefully she will hatch her eggs OK, last  year she failed.
We now have two incubators full of eggs, one contains hen eggs, the other one duck and  half a dozen goose eggs. The young quail continue to thrive as do the Hubbard chicks which have now double their size in just ten days.
With the change in the weather it enabled us to catch up on a few craft projects,

Simon has carved me a primitive wooden statue for the garden, so far we have not named her, I'm hoping for another couple of these when he can find suitable wood.

I have painted another couple of signs on the slates that I had got from the local charity shop, and we also picked up a stone statue last week at a car boot sale,

the guy selling her called her Mother and Child.
The forecast for the weekend is rain, at least we seem to be free of the frosts now, so maybe we can chance replanting the vegetables that we lost.