Sunny days, freezing nights

Ruth Bible climbing french bean. I grew these the year before last and, not knowing any better, I ate most of them as green beans, Very nice, nothing special. However, I wasn't impressed enough to grow them again last year. A couple of days ago I sorted through my dried beans, as you do, and came upon the jar of Ruth Bible. I decided to soak and eat most of them and just keep a small seed stock. The picture above shows what they look like when soaked. They cooked beautifully and became part of a very tasty chilli. They've been reprieved! I have a slack handful ready for sowing in mid April this year, to save for dried use.

Although yesterday was lovely and sunny and got up to 17 degrees outside (24 in the greenhouse), last night was really cold. The white edges on the fern above are crisp frost. The chickens' water had been frozen over but someone had obviously fallen in before I got there (it's only 4" deep) as there were shards of ice on the run floor which were receiving desultory pecks. Nevertheless, although cloudier than yesterday, today was warm enough for a second session at the plot. I went down yesterday and lifted the last of my Jerusalem artichokes and oca from the old half plot, cut down my autumn fruiting raspberries and started to clear the green cover of chickweed and dig over the cleared area. Today I continued to clear and dig. Himself decided to come along and fettle up The Beast - monster of a bean frame built by the previous plot owner.

There are wires every 6" or so from the bottom of the frame and up and over and down the other side. You can see the green blush over the ground here, before it has been weeded and dug. You can also see the edge of the pile of raspberry canes waiting to be burnt. They were still too damp today.

Here's the 'after' picture, taken towards the other end of the plot. It's nice to see where you've been! Still plenty of leeks and spring cabbage to go at. I brought some leeks home yesterday and today we're having spring cabbage with dinner.

Yesterday and today we had a couple of sessions of erecting bird boxes at our end of the village. There's a thin strip of woodland up the road from us and we've put 8 in there (with land-owner permission) and a couple in the churchyard. While we were in the little wood today I glanced over towards the road and just beyond it, in a field of young cereal, I saw a hare. (You've never got your camera when this happens!)

From the living room I can also see rooks ploughing through the air with sticks as big as themselves to re-build the rookery. Noisy but enthusiastic things, they are.