eggs

This morning I found another sign of the approach of spring.  Opening the chicken house to top up their food, I discovered two eggs in the nesting box.  Nice fat dark brown ones, slightly speckled.  The chickens have looked distinctly bouncier in recent days, more active and alert, and have started taking an interest again in the world outside their run.  In the shortest, darkest days they just stood hunched in the corner, looking as if they were waiting for winter to be over.  It'll be time to start letting them out for an afternoon constitutional soon.

I got another three rhododendron stumps out of the wood.  That was cheating slightly, as I picked on the ones that looked least likely to offer resistance (two were completely dead).  The three left to go still have some leaves, and may have more of a root system to contend with.  Still, I feel I'm approaching the home straight in the end of the wood.  I filled up the trailer with another load of brambles and ivy, and managed not to poke myself in the eye on the brambles during the course of the day.  The Systems Administrator obligingly got out the electric chainsaw, and removed a branch of a coppiced hazel that was growing into the airspace of Magnolia campbellii 'Charles Raffill'.  It's all beginning to come together.  I should be safe buying a Eucryphia x nymansay, when I see a good one at work, as I now have the space cleared to put it.  (Finally.  I identified the spot where I wanted to put it back in 2009, which shows the speed at which things sometimes progress in this garden).

There was one solitary snowdrop in bloom.  There are the first leaves of a few bluebells showing, but in general the bulbs in the wood haven't yet started coming through.  I remember panicking about this in past years, thinking that by mid January there ought to be more growth visible, and that something must have happened to them (I don't know what.  The biggest vole invasion in the history of gardening).  They have always turned up in the end, so I expect they will this year.  It's a mystery why this one lone snowdrop is so early.

I finally ticked the Italian garden off my list of things to do.  That has shrunk since I set it up, but is still far too long to finish by the end of February (or probably before the end of 2012).  There are some jobs on it that I haven't touched at all.  Mind you, there are some that are to all intents and purposes finished that I haven't crossed off.  It seems I have a neurotic reluctance to declare any gardening task actually finished.

The black cat was in the wars again, this time with a septic eyelid, but his shot of antibiotics last Monday seems to have been sufficient to nip trouble in the bud, as it looks better than it did.  He is now famous at the vets, following his cruciate ligament operation.  Although they have not explicitly said so, we are more and more certain that he was the first ever cat (as distinct from dog) they'd tried the operation on.  Well done that cat, for being a medical pathfinder.