Odds and ends

A lot more seeds are coming up now - I think I'm most chuffed with the echium, since I love them so much. They're great in containers because they actually prefer to be pretty dry.

I began this afternoon (was busy otherwise in the morning) by starting to clear the patio. I don't use weed-killer on it so I weed it by hand and I'm fastidious. I know my husband finds the effort I put into this amusing and to be honest it is a bit daft but there you go.

As part of this I also weed all the patio pots, move them and clean underneath, and so on. As I was emptying one big pot I must have knocked the switch for the pond pump next to it. I have half an ear on the outflow all the time now (after last summer's disaster) so I was shocked and worried when it stopped, before I twigged what had caused it! But this put me in mind that I needed to begin clearing out the filter chamber.

Cleaning the filter is a piggy job, with one saving grace. The water flows through 4 different compartments, with filter medium of increasing fineness. The work is actually done by microorganisms that live on the medium, so when we clean it out, we do it one chamber per day, so as not to remove all the necessary good bugs. Therefore I get fairly messy over 4 days, rather than totally disgusting in 1!

I'm intending to post some pictures of the garden tomorrow. My father-and-step-mother-in-law are coming to visit for Easter and they like gardening, so I'm looking forward to showing it all to them. It's good to have a fixed point to aim for.