BIRDSONG and FROGCROAK = SPRINGSPRUNG

I thought this was an original title until I looked back a year - FROG BLOG, SPRING SPRUNG - so not so clever.

First daffodils out by the shed under a shower of robin song. These miniature daffs came here in a pot from our previous house and were popped into the only place available as the rest was wasteland, ravaged by the builders of our new house.
Every year I say to myself that I must move them but do not. They seem happy and if there is one golden rule I stick to, then, if the plant is thriving and happy leave it where it is if possible.
This, of course does not apply to weeds - I must go down to the pond again and the bed beside the shed, and dig up the pendulous sedge that has seeded everywhere. (The Yeats influence petered out fairly quickly.) My father used to stay at Inisfree for his summer holidays between the wars. It was only some years later I found it was a summer rented house in Bowness-on-Windermere in the English lake District!

Snowdrops everywhere. These by the big sycamore are dug up whilst in the green every year and planted elsewhere in the garden. Obviously we do not get them all.

I love the spring when the garden fills with birds singing their soprano arias. The bass line is not so beautiful and is generated by frogs. The pond is a maelstrom of sexual energy at the moment. It has so much frogspawn in it that it is becoming congested.
The amphibians swim into hiding when I approach but, with patience and waiting, they gradually emerge to climb over one another in a mass of writhing bodies.
I have not seen evidence of toads nor newts yet though I know both are there.

The evergreen euphorbia R is encouraging to spread beside the path to the pond has begun to sprout and its coloured nodding shoots are on every stem.

We have been away in Herefordshire and Oxford. (Went to the Pitt-Rivers Museum and came away with backache from stooping to examine the exhibits.

What an astonishing place.)
Now back and with gales having struck there are yet more fallen twigs on the banking - which I had just cleared.

The Witch Hazel, Hamamelis × intermedia 'Jelena', is showing its rich orange scented flowers. It lost a branch last year in a storm but is recovering well.

It is good to visit the grandchildren - I helped plant 13 fruit trees on Orcop Hill whilst there - but we both wish they were nearer. (The children not the trees.)

Sometimes I wonder for whom I am gardening. Yes, myself for exercise and for R to enjoy. But I wonder if the effort is worth it. Would I be happy living in a house surrounded by chaos? The wildlife would be perfectly contented with untended lawns and beds.
Perhaps this year I will cut the grass further away from the house longer. But then I say this every year and the control freak within me cannot let that happen.

Come on trees and shrubs, grow bigger and fill the empty spaces.