Spring time and storm damage

More crazy weather going on here. After the large quantity of snow a few weeks back, and the below average temperatures, this week we had a big storm.  Gale force winds were forecast so I was very careful to tighten the sides of the polytunnel, and I slept in the quiet room (around the corner, away from the prevailing wind!).  It was fully justified - several of the neighbours lost roof slates, one of the fences to nextdoor collapsed, but my polytunnel remained unharmed! The sides had pulled out of the clips, and a few things had fallen off the bench inside, but I was so relieved that there was no damage to the plastic.

Unfortunately the conifers didn't survive so well - both the ones at the top of the meadow and the big one in the back of the copse had branches broken off... We'll get around to clearing it up sometime!

It's finally started to warm up a bit in the garden and the daffs are out at the top of the meadow - the ones nearer the house always come out a few weeks later, maybe they're different varieties, who knows.... But it's still way to wet to clear out the veg beds near the tunnel/shed, the weeds took over in the monsoon of last year so there's a fair bit of work to do but every time you try it just turns into a quagmire.  One day we'll have a dry garden! Fortunately the beds nearer the house were better, so I finally cleared out the sprouts/broccoli and planted some potatoes. 

And in more potato news... The ones I planted in the tunnel a few weeks ago have finally started to come up! No sign of turnips or carrots that were planted at the same time, but maybe I was being a bit to ambitious with those. Some of the seedlings are going great guns so have been potted on - tomatoes, broccoli, beans, pumpkins.... I love the way that the big seeds just explode, you turn around and suddenly there's a massive pumpkin seedling that appeared from nowhere!  Garlic is coming on well in the pots in the tunnel so I've had to plant them on as well...  

I'm very excited about the Battenburg Quilt project..... all the blocks are now complete!! Hooray!!! Now I can play around with deciding where they'll all go (cue: clearing the lounge and going back to the state of fabric everywhere).... Soon I'll have my very own quilt - just need to tidy up the blocks, sew them all together, cut and sew on the plain border, cut and sew on the pattered border, pin, quilt, bind. I really don't know what to do about the quilting - do I just do some lines (ditch or offset), or do I practise free-motion quilting on scraps and then quilt this one?