I need a holiday!

Looking back over the last three months, I think we have achieved a fair bit in the garden! Between the two of us, plants have been lifted and divided, moved, planted out, the entire cultivated part of the garden has been weeded, edged, fertilised and mulched, or dug over and compost added, loads of trees have been pruned, shrubs tidied up, ivy and brambles have been ripped out, lawns mown (many times), compost and leaf mould turned and barrow loads of it used, seeds sown, onions and spuds planted.... probably lots more jobs done that I can't think of right now, so now it's time for a break.

So this will be my last post for a while as I'm off on a mostly birding holiday to Catalonia (northern Spain, on the Med) via a few days in the Pyrenees each way. Expect to see some of the photos on the blog when I return. Any potential burglars reading this, forget it, friends are coming to housesit!

This is a bit of a catch up post of some photos I have taken around the garden; some are actually 2 weeks old now, but with the weather turning cooler again it seems the second wave of daffodils are lasting almost as long as the first ones, and the tulips have been flowering for ages. There's plenty of colour in the garden now and a part of me hates to be away at this time of year as I just love spring flowers and blossom, but I also can't wait for a bit of warmth and both mountain and Mediterranean flora and fauna!

A recent photo of my Weeping Cherry by the pond,
which is absolutely dripping with blossom

Dwarf Forget Me Nots (Myosotis alpestris)
which are now self-seeding, just as I had hoped!

My front 'butterfly' bed a couple of weeks ago,
although the Euphorbias and Aubretia still look like this

Species Tulips growing through Euphorbia myrsinites.
They have flowered for ages and have just gone over now.

Armeria juniperifolia - Alpine Thrift

Second wave of daffodils opening up

We've been seeing more sun lately!

And with a bit of dew....

....it's amazing what reflections you can find

You have look deep inside tulips too, because they can be quite stunning!

A miniature woodland under my Rhododendron. I thought I'd lost
these Cowslips as I don't remember them flowering last year,
possibly because it was very dry. But now I see they have spread
and I have quite a few more plants than I remember!

Here are a few bugs I've found on my Euphorbias, which seem to be magnets for flies and other interesting little critters. I've managed to find time to take a few pics with my compact camera, hence not getting very close to the tinier creatures, but I've been too busy tending the garden this last week to photograph it much. :-)

Little Crab spider awaiting prey, or sunbathing.

I had wondered why I kept seeing these bugs on my Euphorbias, but a bit of research
tells me this is the Spurge Bug (Dicranocephalus medius),
and as Spurge is the common name for Euphorbias, it is not surprising!

A teeny weeny cricket!

Take care everyone and .... hasta la vista! Except, it's probably not that at all in Catalan. Nope, I was right, it's 'a reveure'. Far more like French then. Except (again) I've just discovered that Google Translate has a 'listen to' button, and no wonder they say Catalan is a difficult language to pronounce.... the pronounciation of 'a reveure' is nothing like you could imagine or possibly say if you've got an anglophone tongue. 

We'll stick to sign language then, pigeon Spanish and Franglais. We normally get by ;-)

I'll leave you with a freaky photo that came from my compact - after pointing up at the blue sky to capture my (edible) cherry blossoms, I then found the camera had turned everything else a weird blue cast, so the photos which followed were of psychedelic forget me nots and a purple pansy which had turned blue with blueish leaves! I worried I had killed my camera, but it appears to have recovered!