Thank you to everyone who entered our scarecrow competition and congratulations to Bletchingdon Primary School for producing the winner.  There were so many fantastic entries, which showed how much fun everyone had had with the kits.  Please take a look at our scarecrow gallery to see what I mean.

Research into pollinating insects is really, really important and its great news that £10m funding has been provided for the Insect Pollinators Initiative.  We are continuing our support too for bumblebee research and have this month donated £500 of our hard earned profits to our friends at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.  They do stirling work, to help bumblebees like this little fellow which this morning was feasting on our delphiniums.

The RSPB's Nature Count is such a good idea, but somehow the week went by and I never managed to spend an hour counting the birds and mammals in our garden.  Its a shame as I might have been able to include this young spotted woodpecker which is enjoying our trampoline.

For those of you who are considering making a clay oven I have a little tip.  Plastering sand.  Not sharp sand, or mortar sand or concrete sand, but plastering sand from Jewsons.  Mixed with pure clay, plastering sand makes the perfect cob mixture that sets like concrete.

I reckon this is the best week of the year for planting.  The soil has warmed up, we have had some rain (although not enough) and the days are long.  Everything is growing like mad, including the weeds, and seeds germinate in a matter of days (like this rocket, sown only last week).  The only thing that is struggling is my grass seed.  I may have to resort to turf.