Winter's last Hurrah

I'm having a bonus day off work here ahead of my two week Easter holiday, thanks to the snow that fell late last night and hasn't stopped falling since. The school where I work was closed by the snow, so I didn't have to go to work, though I do feel sorry that the children in my class didn't get their fun day at swimming and toy and games day in school. I was going to go head to head with some of them on Mario Kart, but ah well, there's always the summer end of term!

The daffodils photographed again, now laden with snow

Front garden looking wintry

The seedlings are doing very well on the window sills, and the Dahlia yams I planted last week have begun to germinate. Nothing will be going outside just yet though, even if the pea plants are outgrowing their pots already. However, I do have some spinach and salad leaves growing slowly in the cold frame under a fleece, poor things!
 

Peas and French beans are going strong

Dahlia yams coming up (planted 15th March)

 

The new blue bird table and the feeders have been very popular today with the snowy weather. There has been a constant stream of visitors all day, mainly blue tits, sparrows and blackbirds, but also two collared doves, a coal tit, a great tit and a robin. I tried to take some photos, but the zoom on my camera is too modest so I won't post the rather poor photos on here. In fact the camera really needs to be replaced as its flash no longer works either, so I have today, ordered myself a new Fujifilm bridge camera which was reduced in price and has a 30x zoom. Compared to my current 3x zoom, this is going to be great and I can't wait to try it out on the unsuspecting wildlife when it comes!
Progress in the garden... well I noticed Gavin (raised bed builder extraordinaire) had some rather nice wooden beams in the garage and I hinted that they would make good raised beds, but he was already planning to build an olive press for his place in Spain with them. However, I came home from work one day this week to see new raised beds in the garden made from the wood, so a raised bed building fairy must have visited. I should have photographed them before they were buried in the snow, but here's the bigger one anyway. These are lower than the ones at the back of the garden because they will be for more shallow rooted plants and I wanted some aesthetic balance, with lower structures at the front and higher at the back. Not much lawn left now!

Feeling generally optimistic, even if it is a slow start to Spring. It's the school holidays - hurray :O) I've already written over 1,400 words today on my book and there's lots of potential to get things moving now... or to learn patience perhaps while winter persists.