Permaculture in Spring.

Much as I hate the emphasis on gardening when people talk about Permaculture, it is an important aspect, and in spring, that is certainly where the focus moves.
Had BRILLIANT flowering on our semi espaliered apricots, and they now have quite an abundance of baby fruit on them.
Our main nectarine and peach trees burst their leaf buds about a week apart.  Last year, they were both affected by curly leaf, which I treated reasonably successfully with three sprays about a week apart of Nettle and Horsetail tea (Urtica doica and equisetum arvense, not too sure on the spelling of the binomials.)  This year, the nectarine got curly leaf and the peach didn't.  I put this down to the fact that it rained during the week the nectarine opened its leaves, and not during the following week when the peach burst.  Happy to hear any other theories.
The apricot graft on the nectarine, and the plum graft on the nectarine are both healthy.  They are obviously not as vulnerable to curly leaf as the peach part of the stone fruit family.
Both of them have been attacked by little black aphids, but we have a marvelous population of lady bugs.  We photographed the entire life cycle of lady bugs on the stone fruit last year: little yellow eggs, tiny greyish black hatchlings, black, spiky, orange dotty striped juveniles, speckled pupa, and of course the beautiful adults.
We have started picking tomatoes.  I don't know if this is due to incredible skill on my part, or just a mild winter and bird netting.  Our broad beans are just about finished.  The girls must have eaten kilos each over the season, and probably a similar amount of the broad bean leaves.
Our old chicken (over six years old, possibly over seven) has been laying roughly one egg every two days for a few weeks now.  She is a Jungle fowl, presumably the ancestor breed to modern chicken varieties.  I would challenge anyone with a modern commercial hybrid to have them still laying at that rate (even if only for two or three months) at that age.  Certainly she never laid the 300 eggs per year some of the cross breeds can, but she has kept going for longer, and has been a much loved part of the family. (Her and her adopted son, and her two sons that he fathered and their adopted brother, and her grandson and granddaughter...) None of them ended up in the pot, although Liora, at the time about four years old, came up to me with "Fish" in her arms, gently patting him and said "I think this one is going to be a rooster.  We should kill him and put him on the stove and eat him." Fish's sister, Broccoli is still with us, giving us an egg a day at the moment. 
Liora, now six, said recently,  "I can't wait until we have room for more chooks, so we can kill some to eat."  Bloodthirsty child.