MOVING ON, EQUINOX LONG GONE

Firstly Bonjour to my French readers - I have suddenly had 280 hits from across the Channel - c'est incroyable!

I know I have just posted a blog but so much happens at this time of year that I am already writing the next one.

Back to blog basics - boiled egg for lunch and toast - but bread in bin a bit blue and mouldy so had to make a new loaf. 

Had a bit of a disaster with the video camera - good images of ducks and the heron but had fixed the camera upside down!

New flowers every day - erysium Bowles mauve - a perennial wallflower doing well and looking healthy - a favourite of R. Then there is the tulip Madame Lefevre, a favourite of my mother.

Forgetmenots getting going as are the mauve anemones, and still daffodils in abundance.

These on the lower banking came in the topsoil scraped off the site when we built the house. The builder put it back and gradually more and more bulbs have flowered.

Finally got the bonfire to light so now a mound of smouldering ashes with a thin column of smoke winding up through the trees. When cold the ash will be ready to be put on the fruit bushes (potash) - some to go on compost heap as well but not too much as can make the soil alkaline - so a no for azaleas and rhododendrons. 

So a video of our moorhen, ignore the date - forgot again to set date and time -

I had thought that the frogspawn was all eaten and we had lost our frogs but whilst clearing around the pond end and tidying the reed mace out popped a small frog and hopped into the hedge. (The frog did, not me.)(No way can I hop.) 

But the ducks can - as I walk around the pond they walk around it on the other side - seem to know I have no intention of swimming across - and they carefully walk behind the video camera. The only birds it captures are the metal ones by Adam Booth.

We went to Holker Hall on the first day of the garden opening - coffee and a stroll - as members of the RHS we can get in for free. This pink magnolia was in full flower and dramatic.
We wandered through the extensive grounds in spring sunshine. The Great Holker lime was not yet in leaf, of course. Here is its massive trunk.

And then the sun was gone, a low pressure sweeping in from the west and all is back to rain and gloom. 
I had hoped to give the lawns a first mow but the firm servicing them have not yet got them back to me - told me one day then on checking 3 days later they denied it. Now the grass is very wet again - and growing - sigh!

Lots of pictures at this time of year so here are a few of the garden -

And finally not all that grows in the garden is pretty - this is Auricularia auricula-judae or the Jew's Ear fungus - I did not name it. It is edible but needs a good wash as it is rather gooey and sticky. Apparently you fry it with a little butter and garlic, plus or minus herbs.

I have to admit we did not try it!