Spring has sprung

Part 1 - Plants

It doesn't matter to me whether it's the end of February or the end of March, the blossoming of the first daffodils will happen when the time is right, and this is the best indication that spring has well and truly started. Coupled with the sounds of the birds singing, the yellow blooms bring a bright cheeriness to the stark winter landscape and my senses are heightened every time I step outside.

There are a number of plants flowering and trees in bud right now, with early blossoms starting to open and little hints of green on some of the shrubs. Our little hamlet seems to be a bit colder and behind the villages and towns at the start of spring, so we can enjoy the trees in blossom when we are passing through, then a week or so later enjoy the same sights in our own garden.

It can and will turn colder (snow forecast next week!) but we have some colour and interest in the garden now, and March is a month where we could be either freezing or wearing T-shirts, so there is light at the end of the winter tunnel.

On top of all that, the UK's best known TV gardening series (Gardeners' World) started again last night, so it must be spring..... and has reminded me of all the jobs that need doing!  

I planted all sorts of unnamed varieties of daffodil years ago
and they flower at different times, prolonging the season

Monday - the first bloom was almost open, by Wednesday suddenly there were dozens!

Pretty blossom from the spindly Mirabelle plum
which grows but doesn't fruit in our woodland area

I only know this tree as 'Purple Leafed Prunus'. It is very common and is very early to blossom
then is covered with attractive purple foliage.

I could pretend that I meant for this photo to look soft focus
- I didn't, but sometimes 'mistakes' can look better than the intention.
Here is 'Japonica' or Japanese Quince (Chaenomeles japonica)

My Euphorbias are already looking interesting and I now know what two of the self seeded plants are! I'm so pleased as one of them has come from my lost E. martinii, which died either last year or the year before. The other one I've found out has come from my E. characias. I say 'come from' as I don't know for sure that they have come true, or if they are crosses. I love that they self seed all over the place and in the photo below, all three Euphorbias are self seeded. Once upon a time a spindly rose bush lived here and never did well in this very light dry soil, plus it's beside the steps leading to the garage at the front of the house, and was never a great place for a rose bush! I wrote about my different Euphorbias last year here.

Top - looks like Euphorbia amygdaloides, the Wood Spurge
Centre - E. martinii ?
Bottom - E. myrsinitis

It's the red centre of the bracts which show this came from
my original plant, Euphorbia martinii

This is my original Euphorbia characias, which has now self seeded

Shade loving plants have been flowering for a while now. I love finding the occasional pink primrose in amongst the more common yellow ones.

Pink Primrose (Primula vulgaris) at the base of a Honeysuckle

Snowdrops are going over now but the Hellebores are still looking good

Pulmonaria continues to look pretty and I will be weeding
out lots of baby plants as they self seed like crazy!

The wild hazel catkins are over but my Corylus avellana contorta
is in the coldest part of the garden and is only now flowering.
The Weeping Willow (back left) is just starting to come to life.

And in veg patch news.... I have had some help with the digging and weeding.

I did dig some of it! And no, he didn't weed this entire patch by hand.... :-)
But the truth is, he can do a whole plot in a couple of afternoons,
whereas it would take me a month of Sundays

Potato and allium beds are done - 3 more plots still to go.
Left in for now are leeks in the background as food for us, and in the foreground,
rocket and a chinese cabbage which are both flowering, as food for pollinators

I've also had some help with weeding in the flower beds :-)

Rusty 'helping'.
After heavy rain Thursday night the ground is quite wet again

Part 2 will be about insects and birds, as in spring I could go on and on ad nauseum and I have many photos to share, and if I don't do it soon the garden will have changed and I will have to take a load more photos.... and so it goes on!

Video of Hallie playing in the wash basin

I'm not very good at making videos and have had problems getting this video uploaded. I know what to do next time and I could have made this slightly higher resolution but was expecting it to take about 2 hours to upload. It's all a learning curve!

This is a little video showing her fixation with water. She is just obsessed with sitting in or on the side of the wash basin in the bathroom and drinking and playing with the running water. She jumps into the basin at least 5 times a day squealing for me to run the tap!

I confess I have another video I filmed in portrait but it will only show it landscape and try as I might I can't rotate it, so whilst I watched it with my head on one side I won't subject anyone else to that!

I think the 'herd of wild elephants' clonking noise that appear about 2.30 mins in is my OH walking up the wooden stairs! If the video screen looks black just click on the arrow at the bottom left to start.

She's been outside the last few afternoons finally learning to explore the garden and has met the chickens, ducks and a squirrel, and had a walk around beside the lake now! Everything is all new and exciting, if a bit scary at times.

Here are a few photos - I must admit I had not realised how dust shows up on black cats and she always ends up with cobwebs and stuff on her from her exploring. Photos seem to make her look like she's really dandruffy too! It's not fair, because she has a really lovely sleek shiny black coat!

Her collar is looking really tatty already so time to get a new one for her!

Beating the blues

My mood has been really up and down during this last week. I think it's a touch of the SAD syndrome after a week of sunshine then a return to the gloom. However it's been a cold gloom with a nasty wind making working outside rather unpleasant. At the same time I know that the antidote to the blues is to get outside, get some fresh air and do things, so I have been trying hard to do this. I will not be beaten!

Whilst the cold snap has meant that no daffodils have yet started to bloom, at least the Hellebores are still flowering and new flowers are opening up adding a little bit of cheer. 

Saturday we were surprised to see the lake had frozen over - the lowest temperature was (only) about -4C and it normally takes days of cold weather before this happens. My newest ducks were in for a shock as I had bought them last year after our last freeze so this was a first for them. As the day wore on they found plenty of patches under the trees which hadn't frozen solid so they still had water to play in, and by the next day it had all melted.

Whilst I was standing around taking photos here I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye in the conifer on my right, and noticed that there was a Goldcrest right close to me. Try as I might I could not get a decent photo of this tiny and not often seen bird. Goldcrests are about the smallest European bird, smaller even than a wren and really cute, but they are one of the most flitty of all birds and never stand still, so out of about 10 shots as the bird made its way higher and higher up the tree this was the best I could get. Many of my shots were either blurs, or the bird wasn't even in the photo at all as it had moved so fast! At least it (just) shows the stripy marking on the bird's head, although it looks a bit odd from this angle.

On Monday I was really pleased to spot these out of my bedroom window! I love seeing the newborn lambs and watching them gambol about in the paddock across the lane. These are twins and I expect there will be more to come as there are three ewes in the paddock.

They are still living in the same field as the new neighbour's renovation job, which is coming along well. We cannot get over the size of the spoil heap now which is just enormous. I wonder just how deep they dug down inside the house before the cement mixers moved in. I must go over and have another nosey!

They are rebuilding the chimney stack and I'm glad to see they are actually doing a nice job with real stone work. Thanks to my Powershot SX50 I can zoom right in and look at the work in close up!

The time came to let Hallie outside for the first time; that is, the first time since she came to us from outside as an abandoned kitten. I wondered how she would fare out there but she was just as I had imagined, a mix of curiosity coupled with wariness and fear. She has been getting the hang of the catflap through from the kitchen to the cellar/laundry but then there is another catflap to outside - and she's a small cat and this is a large cat/small dog size one which we needed for Smokey who was a huge cat.

You can see my daffodils almost ready to open up here! All my euphorbias are oblivious to the cold and are coming along nicely, opening up their flowers slowly and adding a bit of interest to what is still a very wintery looking garden.

On Monday my neighbour came around to collect eggs and she said she'd been digging her veg patch as the soil was just lovely now after a week of dry weather. I had been pathetically cowering indoors due to the evil wind but after she left I decided I had to brave the cold and out I went for a dig. That was really good therapy as I soon warmed up! The veg patch is a mess of weeds so it is a bit backbreaking from the constant bending over to pick up the weeds, but at least it means I've got lots of green stuff to add to all the straw and poo to mix into the compost bins. 

I didn't get very far! But I really don't want to stuff up my back. My OH usually does the digging but he's been having back problems lately so I thought I'd better get on with it. I've done a bit more since. Even the strawberries have shrivelled up and they need a good sorting out too. So much to do!

On the upside, the same neighbour who keeps horses offered us some half rotted horse poo so we went over and filled our trailer full giving us nearly 2 cubic metres worth. I'll be letting that rot down fully over the summer but a bit of it can be used mixed in with the soil where I plant hungry plants like pumpkins, squash and courgettes which should appreciate it.

Next to the Purple Sprouting Broccoli on the right is the patch of 'Wildflowers for pollinators' meadow that is left from last year which I'm leaving in place. These are the biennials and perennial plants. I had forgotten that I had bought another packet of similar seeds, this time flowers for butterflies, when I was in England, so I need to find some space to sow a patch of those too.

The blurb on the packet doesn't give me any indication as to the species of plants, only a photo. I see no Verbena bonariensis which is my butterfly magnet but that's probably a good thing as I have so much of it here already. The only flowers that are recognisable from the packet are some marigolds and possibly hollyhocks, which I shall be pleased if they are as I'd like some here as I know that bees love them!

There's one other thing I love to do, which is an indoor job. In previous years when I've had the blues I've knitted, but this year I haven't even picked up my knitting once. That's because I am far more into photography now. Sure, I can't wear a photo but at least I don't have to sow up the side seams of a photograph!

So I've had a a macro feather shoot. This is my 'studio'. My desk with few props. The feathers of course come free from the ducks - I use a mix of small feathers and pure down. It's hard to see but there is a tiny bit of duck down on the purple thing.

Sprinkle with drops of water and I can come up with fun shots like these. You can see how the props add the colour. The blue thing is just a cardboard file and the purple thing is a strange holder for a multicoloured pen with a magnet in it so the pen just looks like it's floating.... but it was handy for collecting all the excess water that tends to get flung about. :-)

This one I just lightened up a bit to brighten my mood. :-)

So, it's March now so hopefully spring won't be too long arriving. We have daffodils to look forward to, and towards the end of the month, the return of the Swallows, Chiff Chaffs and Black Caps. :-)