Garden at the beginning of May 2012

I took today off work, as I had loads of flexi-time owing, but then didn't wake until 11am! I had had big plans for lots of sewing activity. But I did get time to take my garden at the beginning of the month photos.

After a month of non-stop rain (which started as soon as the hosepipe ban started!), it's looking very lush and green. The plants are so much bigger than last year so they're covering more of the soil up, so less of a problem with weeds this year.

Probably the major difference this time is our new bird feeding thingy.

We had a lot of problems with squirrels and pigeons taking all of the food. It wouldn't have been a problem if they'd left some for the little birds, but they gobbled the lot and seemed to have insatiable appetites, as well as apparently not having read the pigeon/squirrel instruction manuals which state that they don't eat mealworms/birdfood covered in chilli. Er, our pigeons and squirrels do!

The idea behind this thing is that you set the apertures so that smaller birds can get through, but not squirrels and pigeons. So far it's working very well - although we found a squirrel in it once, and had to reduce the aperture size. A very frustrated pigeon keeps walking round and round it, but it's made a protected space for the little birds to eat, and they've been feeding a lot since we got it.

 The rhubarb we planted last year has grown a lot, especially with all of the rain.We'll be having lots of rhubarb crumble soon.

A close up of the raised bed with lots of growth evident.

This is our cold frame, stuffed full of plants, many of which are waiting to go into the garden as they're cuttings I took last year. I've given a few away to friends already but there's still quite a lot left.

Seedlings growing on on one of the windowsills. These are tomatoes, cosmos and amaranthus.

 And two different kinds of lettuce on another windowsill.