FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING!

Brock is back, well it might be Mrs Brock, can't tell from the night video.

Poem - not one of mine - Anon. wrote it -

It's dogs' delight to bark and bite
and little birds to sing
and if you sit on a red-hot brick
it's a sign of an early spring.

And the world is crazy - it is early December and the snowdrops are pushing up through the leaf litter, daffodils under the magnolia. At this moment, outside my window, the cock pheasant is searching for seeds dropped from the feeders on the shed - blue, great and coal tits hard at work with finches - gold, green and chaffinches pushing their way in. A buzzard is crying in the sky. Last night the tawny owls were hooting through the darkness. And I have just heard that there is a flock of over a hundred waxwings down in the town. Yes we get fieldfares, redwings and starlings - but as yet no waxwings.

There is still colour in the garden especially in the grasses like the stipa gigantea or the miscanthus. The now dead grasses rustle in the breezes. Another three months and then time to cut ethan down and begin again.


There is colour in leaves too - the geranium on the left and the strawberries on the right as the green chlorophyll disappears.
Neither were planted for this purpose but now we have a bonus lighting up a drab time of year.

Some shrubs, too, are doing well - the beech hedge on the left, of course, and the Cotinus on the right. The beech will keep its leaves through the winter.

Even the dying agapanthus leaves are a blast of yellow.

And finally the honesty seed heads, left where they grew rather than taken in and sprayed with gold paint for Christmas light up a dark corner near the bay trees.

All in all there is much still to see - if one bothers to go out and look.

Have just trimmed beech hedge, cut back vicious Rambling Rector rose and put compost on asparagus and rhubarb beds. Despite a face mask got a bit of hedge in my eye - sore.
R hacking away at the dead plants clearing the rubbish.

And so to finish on a rather distorted pic from the inside of the Wendy House down by the pond where R creates her masterpieces.