They forecast two degrees last night, but it actually got down to minus 0.2 so a good thing I pulled the toms when I did. But the day well and truly made up for it with lovely sunshine all day, and temperatures ideal for working in the garden. As a result I have now prepped and sown the beds from which the tomatoes were removed. A row each of carrots, parsnips, beetroot, turnips, swedes, broad beans and brown onions. I have piled mulch either side of the rows to retain moisture and watered them in. Now, no doubt, the cats will get in a play merry hell with the seed distribution and I will have goodness knows what coming up where. A similar thing happened with the carrots and red onions I planted earlier, so when weeding that bed I lifted (accidentally) a number of red onion babies which have now been assigned their own row as they were all cluttered together in their original home. Another cabbage has come out and I am thinking stir fried with soy sauce for dinner tonight.

The rest of the grass (and some areas of more rapid regrowth) has been mown and the areas where stuff is growing up between my various heaps of fire wood, lumber and metal bits has been sprayed with roundup - as has the area around the foundations of the house where weeds seem to volunteer with gay abandon and pulling them out destabilises the foundations.

The compost heap has been given a bit of a turning over and the active heap has had a few additions from the heap I am about to start quarrying, as well as from the various weeding activities (which extended to the hedge and the goose run).

Last night I moved the freezer into its new home and unpacked the bottom of the fridge into it once it stopped humming. Clearly there will be a need for plastic boxes to organise the contents as the thought of scrounging to the bottom of an inchoate mess in a chest freezer does little for me. Still, once the fridge is also in the kitchen all those ready-meals can go back into the bottom of the fridge for ease of access when I am feeling peckish.

You will have noticed a singular lack of comment about the job - well I have to assume they are still chasing referees, which also makes me assume I will be starting after Easter now, so the geese were given yet anothe reprieve (can you tell I am putting off a job I don't want to deal with?)

The weather was so good the neighbour's children were inspired to get out in their back yard with hoes and attack the hoar hound. With something like eight of them hard at work for several hours, you would have hoped to see rather more progress, but the enthusiasm was overwhelmed by lack of method and they achieved only about four square metres ...

The box from the freezer (and various other packing boxes) has been cut up and laid out in the back yard, weighted down with rocks, so that tonight's dew can soak into the cardboard and prepare them for laying along that section of the hedge I weeded today. Add straw, and hopefully this will inhibit regrowth.

I also picked the tall stems of the oregano and have hung them in the 'dining room' to dry out, leaving a dense growth of low-growing leaves to overwinter. Tomorrow I will prune the remaining older raspberry stems and stick them in to the ground and see what happens.