Woke up to hear Pippa Greenwood on the news explaining how to protect all our new spring plants from the hailstorm due on Sunday. Apparently we have to throw old pyjamas over them. I have 200 cowslips just hardened off plus quantitites of foxgloves, heuchara, lavender, lettuce seedlings, dicentra, chocolate mint (smells exactly like After 8s), alliums and cornflowers, simply do not have enough pyjamas. Will have to move everything under cover which means every windowsill in every room but not the chocolate mint which the labrador is certain to eat, since it contains a calorie.

Spent all day snipping off misshapen or dead leaves from the cowslips, filled two buckets with leaves and the plants look much better if much smaller. Judging two weeks yesterday so they'd better hurry up and grow

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I’ve just got back from B and Q where I’ve had a lovely shopping experience getting together all the stuff I still need to take to the show.  Last year I abducted our garden hose which failed to engender domestic harmony so this year I’ve decided to buy my very own ocean going five star windy uppy hose thingy.  I also needed gold paint for my maypoles which haven’t even been started yet. A bit like shopping for shoes if you’re that type of woman.

Plonked everything in the trailer including 150 35 litre pots for the 150 grapevines arriving tomorrow morning from Barcelona, which will need potting on immediately if they are to survive

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