Nest boxes and lawn mowers

I am still coughing away here, brain still feels as though it is stuffed to the gunnels with dense cotton wool, not that l am totally spaced out mind you, just a tadge 'woolly'.

The weather is still improving, such a relief after the coldest winter for 30 years, the daffodils are a last emerging into flower, we might even have to get the lawn mower out to give the Caravan Club site a quick whiz over carefully avoiding the wet bits & boggy bottoms! The hard winter has taken its toil on many of the pot plants on the terrace, the standard lavenders and date palms seem to be well and truly dead, they are no more with no sign of greenness anywhere, shame about that but l will have to look out for some more 'exotic' plants once the fear of late frosts have gone, we are pretty fortunate as we have a garden center outlet, who are also one of our customers, that have a large selection of tropical looking but totally hardy plants. Strange but the olive tree has taken no harm at all.


The woodland planting has in its turn suffered too from the low temperatures & winter blizzards together with those prolonged rabbit attacks resulting in replacing the dead saplings with slightly large plants. Last year, we had to put extra long rabbit guards on all the trees as the rabbits were stripping the bark above the plastic. This year, we have rather a lot of bird boxes to put up around the farm, plus a couple of owl boxes, though the barn owl in the back cow shed seems to be managing OK in the eaves!

The ice cream parlour is now open 7 days a week; orders for ice cream are starting to come in rather nicely from our wholesale customers as the tourists start to emerge after the long winter; the caravan parks are once again open and the coastal resorts are becoming busier with day trippers, or as they say in Yorkshire they have 'comfur-day', together with the early holiday makers taking advantage of the spring weather with its blue skies and sunshine.