Gardening update and other news

Still making excellent progress in the garden...

• All the shrubs and the new hedge have had fertiliser forked gently in around their base.
• The herbaceous bed is now fully dug and weeded. I'll be planting perennials and summer-flowering bulbs rather than cheap annuals as I found a couple of good deals online; the plants and bulbs should be here by the end of April, but probably earlier. IN the meantime, the bed has been mulched with a new straw-based mulch, which is light enough that I can handle a sack of it without help.
• All the patio pots are now ready for re-planting.
• Veg plants are ordered (tomatoes, peppers, chillies, courgettes, aubergine) and seeds bought (coriander, cut-and-come-again salad).
• Two small bay plants (for cooking purposes) have been acquired to replace two extremely dead bay standards that took a dislike to the winter snow and frost this year.
• First wave of potatoes has been planted on the kitchen patio (the patio we don't sit on, i.e. the practical patio).

In other news, I did my first stint as a volunteer at the village shop yesterday. Training in the new super whizzy till and how to deal with hordes of five year old children all wanting 5p worth of different penny sweets. Having spent 7 years (from the age of 14) working evenings, weekends and school/college holidays in a small neighbourhood grocery store, it wasn't a very taxing afternoon.