Spring beginning to spring

It's heartening to see the herbs, cut back to the ground last autumn, starting to spring into green again. There are buds on our baby quince bushes, a new shoot in our pot of bay, vibrant green garlic chives come back to life, and all the other herbs are doing their miraculous back-from-the-dead thing.

We've mostly been gardening in containers for the last two and a bit years, as renting a house has limited our opportunities to plant things out. In a few weeks time we'll be loading up all our pots into the removal van and bringing them to a garden where we'll have much more freedom. Another exciting thing we'll have available is a proper greenhouse for the first time in our gardening lives. Some of the seeds we're currently germinating in propagators (chilli plants, tomatoes, aubergines and some flowers) will be very carefully transported and once they're on the way they should do well under glass.

Noticing that the tarragon (on the left in the picture in the black container) was doing well (it needs re-potting!), I pinched out some of the fresh leaves yesterday and snipped them into a load of butter with salt and pepper to rub onto one of the wonderful chickens bought from Green Poultry on the Cambridge Sunday market. Beautiful as ever, cooked according to the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall method of 20 mins at a high temperature (210c) in the first place, then cooked at a lower temp (180c) for 30-40 mins and left to rest in an open (switched-off!) oven for 15-20 mins after being checked for done-ness. Couldn't resist taking a picture of it...

Frosts this morning, just to remind us that, while Spring is increasingly making its presence felt, we're not really finished with Winter. The birds seemed especially keen to find some food on the feeder this morning. And while the herbs might all be waking up, the poor old cherry tree next door has had rather a shock to its blossom.