The sun has got his hat on!

Yipee!  Today the sun shone all day.  It's still cold but we all feel so much better if it's sunny. 

It's still too cold to plant anything out in the garden, but we've got more beans potted on and various seed trays dotted around the window sills in the house.  

The daffs are making a brave show of things:

and the paeony buds have broken through the soil:

I watched Gardeners' World on TV last night and Monty said that the plants are about 3 weeks behind where they should be. 

I made chickpea burgers a couple of days ago.  I'll put the recipe up at some stage.  I made 6 altogether, had 2 for dinner with chips and stewed tomatoes, and the others are in the freezer.  I was really impressed with them.  I might try another batch with some herbs (fresh coriander would be great, I think).

I tried a different bread flour last night - seed and nut - and it has given us a lovely nutty cob loaf.  

It slices really well, so much so that there' s fair chunk gone already!

While I was doing the ironing this afternoon, I found the 'steam' part of the iron didn't seem to be working at all.  I suspect it's due to the very hard water we have here; the sprays are probably bunged up with limescale.  Yes, I suppose I should be using distilled water but I don't.  However, N has just spent quite a while running a mixture of water and vinegar through the iron, and he tells me that he's got loads of gunk out of the steam sprays, and the iron certainly seems to be steaming better now than I've known it do for a very long time.  Thank you, N, for another maintenance job well done.  As he said to me, it's saved us the cost of a new iron!  We won't mention that the flat smell like a chippy ;-)

This was just after sunset last night.  The colours were so calming.