POTTERING ABOUT WITH COLLECTIVE NOUNS

40 Cosmos pretty and 40 Ammi majus plugs arrive and need potting on and putting somewhere bright and warm - but where. We have no greenhouse so a spare bedroom will have to do for now.

I now have gardeners' nails - ingrained with the darkness of compost no matter how I scrub.

Actually 60 of each and more than one seedling in many plugs so good value for money from Crocus but what I am going to do with them all - ? Perhaps give some away?

The feeders are full of goldfinches, well half a dozen - a small charm. Collective nouns are strange sometimes - I can see an exultation of larks but a parliament of owls? Then there are a pair of bullfinches outside the kitchen window - they are a bellowing of bullfinches! Also we have a bouquet of pheasants, a sute or sord of mallard.

Talking of collections - here are a fall of lambs - actually a gang would be better?

Wikipedia has a sprinkling of gardeners! Not sure about that one.

We have our sweet violets in an egg cup on the kitchen windowsill - they smell wonderful but only once as the scent medium is a local anaesthetic so you smell them, lovely, then try again and nothing for a while.

I was mentioning compost a blog or so ago and here is some dark rich lumpy stuff by one of the euphorbias. It may not be quite up to Monty Don's standard but smells ok and looks good. I son't think the plants bare too bothered what it looks like.

And the rain it raineth, and the gardener stays in and does crosswords, reads, watches tele, paints the bath side with a second coat of Farrer and Ball's All White, writes blogs etc.

Then cometh the next day and it is fine - I empty the compost heap and spread on the garden, plant a clematis montana that has been in a pot for three years under an ash tree by the old log pile, drag some excess weed from the pond and ache all over!

A grey squirrel is back as is the greater spotted woodpecker. I bring in the video camera from the wood - and find it is full of myself picking up sticks, not an animal or bird in sight, not even a cat. Mute swans fly over, their wings whooshing through the evening air. Spring is everywhere.

That was yesterday - this morning - 

Oh! The British weather! The garden is a world of flattened daffodils.