It's half way through March, and I'm still not there with the vegetable patch. I've weeded some of the beds once, so that they just need a final going over, but others still sprout intractable tussocks of the nastier weed grasses, running roots delving deep or jinxing out under the paths, curly and fragile and ready to snap off before you've got the last piece out. One bed that's received only a preliminary weeding still sprouts a fine crop of bramble stems, chopped six inches above the surface while I haven't got round to digging out the roots yet. And the remains of the neolithic compost barrow are still sitting by the hornbeam hedge instead of being spread over the veg patch and beaten down with fork and fingers into something like a tilth.
I fretted that I should have sown the broad beans by now. After half an hour of weeding and compost spreading I was rather more relaxed about having not yet opened a single packet of vegetable seeds, beyond starting some tomatoes in a heated propagator. The wind was cold and so was the soil. I certainly wouldn't have fancied sitting on it bare buttocked, the traditional test to see whether it's ready to sow peas. It didn't feel as though I'd missed out on valuable growing days, even if broad beans and beetroot are hardier than peas.
Still, things must warm up soon, and I've got the seeds for the cutting garden to think about, as well as vegetables. I was going to spend the day on the beds and try to move things along perceptibly, but ended up letting the chickens out for a run, even though the vegetable patch lies beyond the point where the chickens are allowed to go, up the side of the wood where the foxes live. They looked so imploring, I didn't have the heart to keep walking past their pen and ignoring them any longer. When chickens really want something they let you know. They are very expressive animals, hens. In fact, it was the sight of a hen in a run pecked bare at an industrial museum, trying very hard indeed to reach a nettle on the other side of the wire, that sparked my interest in domestic poultry, because I had rarely seen a creature want something as nakedly and intensely as that hen wanted the nettle.
When our hens want to be let out, they come rushing towards you each time you approach their pen. Then they stand looking at you. When you go away again they congregate disconsolately by the pop hole that would lead to temporary freedom, if only you would slide the door over, and they make little grumbling noises to each other that are different to the soft chuntering clucking they make as they settle on their perch after an afternoon ranging around the garden. They radiate want.
They were very good when I let them out, and all five stayed close together and in the front garden, so I could get on with weeding and tidying without interruption. In fact, they frequently came to inspect what I was doing, and hoover up any worms I'd turned up. They are companionable animals when they behave nicely. The afternoons that have me vowing not to let them out the next day are when two stay near the hen house in the front garden while the other three shoot off to the bottom of the back, or when they never stay anywhere for more than ten minutes before disappearing at speed, so that I look up from whatever I'm doing to realise that I can't see them at all, and then spend ten minutes walking around looking for them because they've gone to ground in a hedge.
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