Spring Arrives... 6 Weeks Late

We have had an incredibly bad spring in the UK this year, and where we are (up in the Central Scotland hills)  is always behind the rest of the country, even at the best of times.

Our daffodils only opened their heads this weekend.

A long awaited beautiful splash of colour.

The rhubarb is roughly 6 weeks behind schedule. We usually have our first crumble in March.

Forced rhubarb; not quite enough for a crumble just yet.

Tomorrow is the 1st of May and really the whole garden should be much further on than it now is, but still... better late than never. When Spring does decide to get going I am going to have loads of seeds to plant and catching up to do.

The single biggest headache of it all is the darned chickens. Remember we got 2 new hens back in February? well so far they have laid a total of 3 eggs. Our old ladies aren't doing much better, but at least they are laying a reasonable size of egg.

Our new girls lay eggs about 1/3 the size of our old ladies eggs.

We are down from our expected 4 eggs a day to just 2 eggs a week for the past 2 months. I'm suffering omelette withdrawal symptoms and Small would kill for a plate of pancakes.

As long as they have enough food and water and the occasional chance to roam freely we are the best of friends and they should usually lay 1 egg each per day during all but the worst weather.

Come on chickens.. shake a leg

Today is gloriously sunny and the mini-holding (and for that matter I) would be much better off with a few weeks of this, thank-you very much.