Verona Strauss.comjust because life is fun! …

My first radish popped its round head above the soil to say hello. I think the rain made it grow.

I picked it, dusted it off and couldn’t wait to eat it. It was yummy; I had it with some cheese. Now there are some more growing, but I forgot to plant more seeds, so I need to do some this weekend otherwise these will be gone by the end of the week.

Mummy is sad because two of her sunflowers and some of her kale have been eaten by slugs. But all of my radishes are ok - perhaps slugs don’t like them like I do!

What are you growing in your garden?

Dissecting my owl pellet

I went to a new wildlife watch group this morning where someone collected owl pellets which owls sick back up after they have eaten their vole or mouse. They sick back up the bits their body doesn’t want because owls eat every bit of the animal - the bones, fur, eyes, tail, feet and claws.

We filled a shallow tray with water, put our owl pellet in and pulled the wet bits apart with tweezers and needles to pick things out.

We picked out skulls, bones, claws and jaws from mice, voles and shrews. One of the ladies told us what these bones belonged to.

It was fun and next time we’re going pond dipping and for a long walk to see what we can find.

some bones I found in my pellet

My potatoes from the potato council are growing really well.

This week it was time to earth them up. The Rocket look much stronger and healthier than the Vale Emerald. The vale emerald look a bit yellow and are smaller.

Mummy looked up yellow leaves in her vegetable book, but we couldn’t work out why they were yellow. Perhaps they are not very happy. Mummy thinks they might need something like nitrogen.

I should be eating my first radishes in a weeks time. I can just see the red globe poking out from the earth. My sweetcorn and cucumbers are growing well. I haven’t planted my cress yet.

I have some tiny mint leaves just appearing and I’m sharing the peas with Mummy. There are some tiny shoots, but not many. Our soil is very hard - it is clay, and full of weeds, so it’s quite hard to grow things because we don’t like to use nasty chemicals.