Charlotte potatoes were planted 1st March, earlier than usual but weather was  lovely, and covered with blankets. Shoots visible today, 23rd so blankets taken off. We’re in business. Eating them by early June. Those in the greenhouse are 2 or 3 weeks ahead. 🥔🥔🥔

A misty morning hut nonetheless the Merlin app (5*) heard 29 species in the garden including Green Sandpiper, ( Tringa ochropus, Chevalier culblanc, ) quite rare here in France, over-wintering (<1000 individs according to the LPO app)

Peas on Earth. Doing well under a cloche (the feathery thing is dill, surviving there since last year, it has good flowers for insects so I will not ‘weed’ it out - Mme puts the leaves in her home-made gherkins).

A Common Slow Worm hiding under a cover on a grassy compost heap. Nice to know they live there.

We get a lot of lichen on trees in Lower Normandy, so prunings of old wood get saved to make a lichen garden, at the side of the greenhouse. There are 3 species of green lichen here. Zero maintenance. Good for moth larvae too.

Snakes: sadly my cats caught and killed a pencil-size, baby Couleuvre d’Esculape (Zamenis longissimus, harmless) on our lawn yesterday - I will spare you the photo - but at least we know they live in the gaden, probably under the grass cuttings heap (accummulated for 7 years).

We generate a lot of woodash in the log-burner in the winter months. We add to compost bins through the year, sprinkle around flowering trees and herbaceous plants to promote flowering, and rake into veg plots. We seive out larger chunks of charcoal for BBQs, the biochar left is good for the soil.

The Merlin bird app heard a Barn Swallow yesterday and today, a week or two earlier than last year. (Southern Normandy, France) Let’s hope they nest again in our barn this year - they didn’t the last two years. We are trying in the garden to produce the insects for them.

Lots of spiders’ webs on the grass this morning

Cats helping in the garden: checking the mange-tout in the cloche, and keeping the compost warm

All those fallen twigs and tree prunings, too small to dry for log fires, have gone into a new dead hedge in the wildlife garden. No cost and easier than going to green waste. An old log trimming on top keeps it tight.

I have been busy making bird nesting boxes and, now, traps for Asian Hornets founding mothers. I also bought a sophisticated trap (Good4Bees) that can be adjusted for entrance and exit hole sizes in summer and autumn to catch the workers. NB neither should trap European hornets or small insects.

Amongst other things the Merlin app heard this morning was a mallard duck. Hardly surpising then that we were chasing two ducklings out of the garage and around the garden in our pyjamas first thing, returning one to the nest in the neighbour’s pond and the other to the relative safety of our pond.

We just started making a new wildlife garden in 9m x 15m of our tall grass area, including the pond. We are planting by dividing perennials. There are hedges on two sides, we will hedge the other two with privet (it’s cheap) and hazel (we are growing the bare-root plants from winter prunings).

Our garden pond is in its third year: today I was watching a smooth newt swimming in the pond. We have plenty of frog tadpoles for it to eat!

A single 400-year-old ancient oak produces 234,000 litres of oxygen a year while soaking up carbon dioxide, and can support more than 2,000 species of bird, insect, fungus, and lichen. Nature is amazing - we need more of it, not less. Please repost if you agree 🌳

A recent David Attenborough TV programme pointed out that for Blue Tits (and others?) to have enough calcium to make their eggs they need to eat a lot of snail shells. So we collect and crush empty shells we find, and egg shells from the kitchen, and leave them on plates in the garden. 🐣

Well, would you believe it? (Yes) Today’s The Observer paper, front page and p10, reported their investigation into collaboration between Fakebook and online gambling web sites illegally capturing user IDs and information and then Fb use it to push gambling adds at those vulnerable to them. p1:

I am making preparations to leave Facebook. (I happen to have had a Flickr account for almost 20 years so I am going to use a Flickr group to keep in touch with my Fb friends - we will see how it goes!) Without members Fb and X lose their power.