Never ending circle.

It's now time to start planning this years garden. We started by being ruthless when sorting out our seed store, some of the seeds had travelled to Spain with us and back again, I'm not too sure how many packets of partly used seeds we dumped, but it was a lot. Once that job was done we then drew up the list of what we are growing this year, we only needed to order five packets of seeds to replenish our store, in fact it was only four packets but we also ordered Cantaloupe melon to the order, it's called Minnesota Midget and comes highly recommended by another blogger. We both love melon and it seems impossible to buy any that are worth eating so we will have a go at growing them. The seed company that we have ordered from is 'The Real Seed' company, they are a seed saving company who only use open pollination and no F1 hybrids in sight. Reading up on them they appear to be more ethical than any other seed company we have found, we look forward to growing some of their seeds.

In preparation for the growing season we took a trip to the coast to gather more seaweed,

the gods were kind to us and had left neat mounds for us to collect, we came home with fourteen sacksful of instant fertility plus twenty large mussels for my lunch the next day.

We had timed our visit just right, the tide was on it's way out.

We were a little mystified by a pair of perfectly good trainers sat side by side abandoned. There were no other people on the beach, maybe they walked there themselves, but it made a change from seeing then tied together by the laces and then thrown over power lines.

Things are moving in the garden, if this mild weather continues we will be picking rhubarb at the beginning of February.

The calendula has continued flowering all winter,

and we have a miniature daffodil out in flower,

the first crocus are also flowering but there is no sign of our snowdrops, maybe it's been too mild or too dry for them.

January is also the time that the Seville oranges arrive in the shops, we bought four kg of them and froze three kg of them, today I made the first batch of this years  supply  of marmalade. I say I made it today which is not strictly true as I started my marmalade yesterday. This recipe has never let me down and I always get a good set doing it this way.

 The one kg made seven jars of marmalade, which works out to just seven two cents a pot, not bad for a 100% organic fruit preserve..