My workshop-potting shed

My home is my castle, but my potting shed is my retreat. I could spend hours in there fiddling around, except when it's a mess and upsets me. Then I will spend hours tidying it up. It has two sections. The workshop, where I keep the lawnmower, shredders and all the tools, and the potting shed, where I keep the ladders and everything else. It has electric but is unheated and has a sliding barn door, a french door and a window on the potting side. Both sides have working benchs the length of each section.

I was in there today setting up my new gas heater and sowing sweet pepper and celeriac seeds. I keep my oleander and potted lavender in there over winter. I think my ancient lavender rather likes its chilly winter quarters. It blooms there every year at the beginning of March.

I think with the barrel heater up and running, I shall be in my shed a great deal more, pottering around with my pots! It was toasty warm, and I thought I'd take a few pictures to share.

Here is the potting side.

The potting side

now with the gas heater

There is actually a small terrace behind the french door, but at the moment there is fire wood covered with a canvas. I can open the doors and sit outside in summer with just enough room for a chair.

No photos from the workshop, because it's a mess and upsets me. ;-)

Down in the garden the earth is still frozen. I stuck my spade 10 cm down into ice crystals, and thought it better to leave well alone. Instead I moved the paving stone paths and broke one in half as well! Oops...

The reason I had to move them was, I had two beds that were less than 120cm and one that was way more. I had left it that way, because the strawberries were growing right up to the edge. I forked them up and bedded them in the earth. Now all six beds are approximately 120 cm wide, and easier to calculate my plant spacing. The brassicas in one and the beans, corn and pumpkins in the other, and they just wouldn't have had enough space.

My pool cover is really annoying me now. It keeps slipping into the water, because of the leaky swimmer cushions I bought. I am going to have to find some old tire hoses next year that will actually work, failing that even beach balls would be better than the rubbish they sold me. If only I had kept my exercise ball...lol.

The days are getting longer and my dafodil leaves have emerged, a sign that the worst of winter is over.  March here is always a bit iffy. In some years it has snowed at the end of March, lets hope it doesn't and if it does, well that's our fate as gardeners.

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/phyllis_theroux_135031

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/phyllis_theroux_135031

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/phyllis_theroux_135031

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/phyllis_theroux_135031

"I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation."

Phyllis Theroux