The Pig Yard

April - This proved to be a restful month compared with March. The evenings were lighter and Steve came home from work to find Jane busy potting on seeds in the greenhouse or preparing the vegetable plot. As always in April there were some beautiful spring days shortly followed by wet and windy weekends. We did manage to get the balloon out over Easter and have a flight which proved to be an excellent experience.

It was also our 33^rd wedding anniversary so we celebrated by inviting many of our friends over for a meal. This was not much of a break for Jane because she spent a good part of the day worrying and preparing for the dinner.

Slowly but surely we are finishing the details around the pond. We have some marginal plants growing at the edges and these are flourishing as the weather warms up. The second level of decking has been finished so that it juts out over the pond and gives a shaded area for the few fish and frogs that we have already living in it.

Jane has been busy working in the greenhouse sowing vegetable and flower seeds. The warmth in the mid part of the month has brought the seeds on in leaps and bounds and she has already planted some of them out into seed beds in the vegetable plot.

The rewards of Jane's efforts last year are still being experienced and this month we finished the last of the sprouting Broccoli this month and it was delicious, so much so that Jane has sown a load more seeds.

Building work started on our next door neighbours extension just after Easter and like the good neighbours we are, we agreed that the workmen could use our drive to access the back of the house to undertake the ground work. Our naivety on the amount of disruption this would cause has been considerable. In the first week they managed to break the automatic gate mechanism when moving it from one wall to another, lose part of one of the remote control handsets and dislodge the water mains into the house.

Every day when we came home from work we wondered what would greet us this time. The combination of a digger and heavy rains towards the end of the month turned the gravel yard outside the garages into a quagmire.

This was possibly one of the quietest months we've had for a long time but it doesn't mean we've totally stood still. We've taken time to go visiting friends and catch up on gossip. The fact that we had Jane's mother staying with us on the weekend when the best weather all month occurred did restrain us doing the things we would normally undertake. At least we got to sit in the garden and watch balloons flying over.

the month of May looks like it's going to be a far busier month because we've booked a week's holiday in Paphos, Cyprus - more of that next month.