WHERE HAS ALL MY STAMINA GONE

Long time passing etc etc . . .

An hour digging out the top stream and I am kna very tired and perspirey.

"A cuppa tea, a cuppa tea, I'd lub a cuppa tea." (Quote from Spike Maligna the well-known typing error.)(Quote from Spike etc etc.)

Let us start with an early morning shot of the garden taken from the wood

Right, that done, we move on.
"What did your father do with the Pleones son?"
"He put them in and on the stones around his gnome. That's not a gnome, it's a dwarf. Well, it is small. Doc too. Very appropriate.

They are not too hard to grow. They usually grow on mossy trunks. Roots die off in winter and leave pseudobulbs. Do not bury them. They should be on the surface and many species are hardy to cold. They like a cool partially shaded position. In the winter, after the foliage has died down, leave dry. Water in the spring once new growth has appeared.

But then we have had a mild winter. This osteospermum has flowered a bit throughout. Usually they succumb to the cold.

I never thought I would get tired of birds singing but there is one cock chaffinch that never stops. It sits in the small ash outside my window and goes on and on and on. He probably thinks that that is how to get a mate but the female birds are probably taking wide avoiding action. I mean it could drive one mad when all is wanted is a quiet snooze on the eggs.
SAW A SWALLOW three miles away down by the bay.

At last - I hope it will not be long before they get here - if any of them have survived the shooting ranges in Malta and Spain. It seems hardly worth it for such a small bite.
Perhaps we should equip the birds with miniature air to ground missiles and let them take out the hunters. Well, not hunters - there is little hunting goes on just firing away at anything that flies.
Apparently millions of small songbirds are slaughtered for FUN!?

Perhaps the RSPB should offer bounty for each gunman removed from the scene?

It worked to eradicate the Red Kite and other raptors. (Not velociraptors - that was before the RSPB was founded.) (RSPB - Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) (This information is for the man in Canada and the reader in Kazakhstan).

This blossom above is the Prunus shirotae.

Both the big cherries are fantastic so expect more pics in the future.
The one below is Prunus taihaku.

In the autumn I ordered sweet pea seeds and have put them somewhere safe - somewhere where they will not germinate as they are in their paper envelopes - cannot find them.

And my lovely cosmos seedlings are no more - just slug food I think - aaaagh! The big crambe has also had its leaves assaulted - slugs and snails again - so out with the beer and bury a glass jar to its neck in the soil. Get 'em drunk, get 'em dead. I am unable grieve for them and anyway they will be so blotto when they drown they will not care.
Apart from beer and nematodes and slug bait I know of people who have crushed snails in their fingers, squished slugs and even taken scissors to slugs and chopped them in half. A friend goes round every evening with a bucket collecting snails (he has a lot of dry stone walls), fills the bucket with water and puts a lid on top to stop escapees.

Why can't we all live in perfect harmony - dear slug/snail you can have 10% of my plants if you promise to leave the rest alone.

Where have all the Cosmos gone, l-o-n-g time passing!