The day has been bright, cold and sunny. In the right angle and out of any wind there was some heat in the sun but where there was any breeze the heat was replaced with a chill air.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the garden. Half an hour pulling at weeds and trying to gain some control over the ground elder that seems to grown in every bed twisting its way up the roots of what ever is in there.

The tomatoes and chillies are starting to shoot in the greenhouse. So maybe I will do better than last year and there will be a crop we can actually eat.

The rest of the time was spent potting dahlias. I’d dug all the tubers out of the ground late last year in October and since then they have been on an old orange Sayer’s the Bakers tray in the greenhouse with their soil. With the promise of heat in the sun it seemed like a good day get them out again. Some of the tubers had gone soft in the winter cold but most of them were still firm. I shook off their dry earth and put them in pots with new clean damp soil dug out from the depths of the compost heap.

It is good to think of those dried husks slowly taking on life over the course of the next few weeks as the gathering warmth and damp soil works on them.

I fell asleep for twenty minutes face to the late afternoon sun listening to James Yorkston having been to see him last night. He had played with The Pictish Trail and Seamus Fogerty each taking turns to play a song, swapping harmonies and instruments.