Under the weather on my birthday

Last time I wrote we had had some snow but not excessive amounts, I was additionally feeling rather tired and somewhat under the weather but put this down to the early start for my last day working in Suffolk. The beans were doing ok and the garden semed to have got through the frosts, the shallots were coming up and I was choosing from my seed catalogues.

New Year was heralded in with me coming down with severe bronchitis, I made it until midnight but faltered fairly soon after that and the last week has been a haze of honey with lemon, coughing, antibiotics and generaly feeling sorry for myself. It seems that the garden has been suffering in a similar way with some extraordinarily long lasting snow and heavy ice. I got some new boots today and they are so funky I just had to go investigate the garden.

Wrapped up warm I discovered that the fleecing i had wrapped around the acer, hibiscus and apple had frozen solid and (luckily) fallen off the shrubs. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that they will bud in teh Spring. The beans which in our pre-Christmas snowfall were merrily poking out of the top of the snow have given up and become buried, along with the shallots, garlice and honesty. The only things which seemed to be actually enjoying the snow were two green pea shoots which were waving around happily in the breeze.

My polytunnel which was about £15 has become a solid frozen icicle and although I got the worst of the snow off I didn;t want to rip the fabric and so couldn't tell how the peas underneath are doing. We are forecast several days if not another week of sub-zero temperatures so i think it will be a while before i can properly survey the damage to my plot.

New Years Resolutions included a determination to make the plot as productive as possible, and a final nail in the coffin of the supermarket for sourcing our food - especially fish and meat. My halfway house has been to get meat and fish straight from the counters rather than packaged, but I really really want to stop doing this and getting all our food direct from farmers markets or local food shops. Budget also comes into this, obviously, with only one of us working, but i can cycle to various shops now to get food.