GETTING LIGHTER SPAWNING SPRING

The pond is croaking creaking with frogspawn. So the mallard are back (and hungry) and the heron keeps a watching brief for the frogs.

There are the first celandines and one or two tete-a-tete daffodils glowing yellow in the sun which also means thew crosses are wide open.
Today has been mainly removing herbaceous plants from the rose bed and replanting in what was the strawberry bed, removing more of the strawberry plants to create space, weeding the asparagus and rhubarb beds (first shoots through) and picking up sticks.

One big branch down in the wood and a lot of smaller stuff - from the recent gale.

I also started to tine the grass and gave up quickly as I realised there was much too big an area to do with a fork.
Next day was raking off the primrose banking and taking the debris to the bonfire. Then I collected more sticks and did the same, though saving some for kindling for the wood burner.

My purchase of a bag of nyger seed seems a waste of time as the birds ignore them and continue to eat the sunflower seeds and peanuts - like this long tailed tit.

So to a bunch of snowy garden pics I have not yet shown - 

We do get other weather like this sunset -

and gloomy days -

but even in the darkest times the snowdrops light up the garden.

Last year was so wet the stream never stopped running like it often does in the summer and 2018 seems to be continuing in the same rain vein - ah! a rhyme - poet and don't know it.

I have found the hole in the bed of the top stream which leads to the new spring lower down so blocked it up - but water finds a way so I expect it will reappear soon.

I seem to be going through a lot of bird food though it is not just birds that are eating it. I watch the wood mice at the back of the house and the bank voles (shown here eating half an apple) outside the kitchen window.

Then there is the master peanut cruncher - 

I have been out pruning back the buddleias as it is a mild day (Siberian cold due at the end of the week). 

The spring is running again - sigh!

Tea and a biscuit - daren't get on the weighing scales.