SPRING?

No chance? - the springs in the garden were frozen, the stream dry as all the water is locked in the earth.

Lost a few plants in the freeze, the half hardy ones like the osteospermums. The eucalyptus was almost bent double in the gale at the end of last week and I shall have to pick ups sticks again as the place is carpeted.

Before the freeze there was warm spring sun and I sat out with my coffee listening to the birds singing.

Then Russia sent us an east wind, straight from Siberia, with night frost and a bitter wind. It struggled to get above freezing even during the day. So fleece on and in the garden digging and shifting compost before it all went rock hard with the cold. I dug out a thug of a Day lily from the lower rose bed, it took almost an hour and I think I may not have got all of it.

Spring was here and flowers were appearing everywhere, not just snowdrops 

but small daffodils, winter flowering pansies, small irises and crocuses,

primulas and the wild primrose, primula vulgaris.

 The quince on the wall by the shed that D gave us has been flowering on and off all winter but is now doing really well.












The bird box (robin or wren) on the big sycamore had never had anyone living in it so I have moved it somewhere I hope will be more suitable - fingers crossed. Robins are in full voice declaring their territories.

The bottom hedge is now sporting hazel catkins - another portent of spring. - ha ha.

I have tidied out the main shed and taken an old Dimplex radiator and a decrepit lounger to the tip - spring cleaning?

The amaryllis, now over and in need of sustenance are repotted and on my windowsill. The bulbs are a bit small so may never do well but I will give it a try.

The garden has dried out with the frost and wind - feels like -10C - and I have done more buddleia pruning, strawberry bed clearing and even attacked the rosa rugosa by the washing line.

There is nothing much gardening wise to do so, some time ago, I set myself the challenge of writing poems with titles of veg or fruit.
Here is one -

BROCCOLI

A tight white perm in a green collar

turned up against the heat,

hair so brittle it might crumble 

under the drier if overdone.

Usually Edna emulates her friends -

planted in a Thursday row

in Ida’s steamy salon

reading Homes and Gardens,

slowly growing rigid curls,

good enough to win a prize -

crisp and curd white 

above their cheddar smiles.

But now she has cast aside

her pristine Calabrese,

defies her white roots
and sprouts a purple-tinted rinse.

And to finish - a few wintry shots of the garden left over.

And the weather forecasters say it its going too get cold again this weekend - 😞