IT'S PIGEONS MATE

Every morning I walk to our bedroom window and look up the garden. Today, on the low fence by the oriental poppy bed, were a pair of wood pigeons billing and cooing. Then, Voila! A quickie, then more billing and another.

Who would think our garden is a hot bed of sexual intrigue - mind you, you only have to watch the cock blackbirds chasing one another, the rabbits doing what rabbits do best and so on . . .  even the plants are at it with their anthers and stigmas.

The Clematis armandii is becoming spectacular and rampant - and  probably planted in the wrong place.

Some birds in the garden are spectacular like this bullfinch. Yesterday I looked out of my window at the usual pigeon under the feeders, a chaffinch and then a wood mouse ran out and took a seed from under the pigeon's beak


The perpetual spinach has recovered from being sheared by R. It has done well all winter though did get nibbled a bit at times. The weather has been mild so I suspect lugs and snails. The tulips are really getting going now and I cannot wait for the cherries to reach full flower - each day a little more blossom.

When is a weed not a weed? When they are OK by me? A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place perhaps? Lesser celandines, Ranunculus ficaria, appear all over the beds and I do remove some. R regards them as WEEDS but I quite like their golden flowers - and the leaves die back early.

Saturday and the weather looked fair. I opened the shed and put down the ramp for the sit on mower. The grass is dry for almost the first time this year.

Then it hailed - well, a mix of hail and snow and rain!

Who would live in England! (We do.)

We went to Holker Hall gardens and found an innovative use for an old tree stump -

The buds were coming on especially on the magnolias - right and camellias - on the left. Also there were several different shades of hellebores. I particularly like this almost black one.

The other night we had the most amazing sunset over the bay, hail showers and a hailbow on the right, sun reflected in Morecambe windows on the left 25 miles away. (Mind you I heard there had been a plastics fire in Fleetwood at the time - no I don't think that was involved but - ).

When I woke this morning there was a fat rabbit in the oriental poppy bed chewing the leaves - fence or gun? I went to the window and shouted, banged the window and the rabbit - just stared at me insolently from 20 yards away.

Finally have had the sit-on mower out and only got stuck once!