Fanart by CuteJelly

“The cork sprang from a rectangular crystal bottle standing on the stool. The bath-chamber started to smell of lilac and gooseberries. The cork traced several circles and jumped back into place. The sorceress fastened the cuffs of her shirt, pulled on a dress and materialised. 'Fasten me up.' She turned her back to him while combing her hair with a tortoiseshell comb. He noticed that the comb had a long, sharp prong which could, if need be, easily take the place of a dagger. He took a deliberately long time fastening her dress, one hook at a time, enjoying the scent of her hair, which fell halfway down her back in a black cascade.”

"He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never sympathised with the desire to shut oneself up on one's own farm. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not a man. And I hear that our intellectuals have a longing for the land and want to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life -- it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action.

Not as sunny as Thursday and definitely colder today. Main priority: Plant allll the onions and shallots! I wasn't going to mention this, but I had to dig up about 3 rows of onions I'd already put in as I accidentally overlapped with the potatoes. That will teach us not to label things properly…But never mind, all is sorted now and everything is in its proper place. First job was to put in the gooseberry bush gifts I got given on Thursday:

Fruit my pretties, fruit! Hopefully they will be happy in their new home. Next job - onions. We've put in two varieties of onions 'Red Baron' and 'Hercules' so hopefully will have a nice crop of red and whites. Will also made a cage to keep the pesky pigeons off.

The shallots are called 'Red Sun' and I hope that we've planted them correctly. I DID follow the instructions. However, this is coming from the girl who planted potatoes upside down accidentally in Will's family farm vegetable garden...

They'll be fine…

We also put out our courgettes in the back garden under a poly tunnel - we have grown a LOT. But we both like ratatouille so that's ok. The back garden is going to be courgette and squash town.

So, everything is growing nicely, and we've got lots of seedlings growing indoors too. All we have to do now is keep on top of it all!