ENCHANTED APRIL

If you are reading this there has not been a nuclear war and we are back from the sun in Tuscany. Don't quite know how R got me there as I hate travelling via airports and stuff. 

The garden has not changed that much in a week but has come on with the improving weather. The goldfinches are enjoying the Nyger seed, cock chaffinches fall to the ground locked in combat, avian hormones dominating all and Mr and two Mrs Pheas' patrol underneath looking for dropped offerings.

The banking by the wood is still full of wild daffodils and primroses but I have noticed the Conference Pear has a split in its trunk. The tree has not yet fruited well so I will be keeping a close eye on it. The willow I have tried to weave and shape looks pretty dreadful but, perhaps, with leaves it will improve.

The pulmonaria is doing well in the dark bed to the north of the house and spreading well. It's other name is Lungwort - possibly after the spotted leaves than resemble a tuberculous lung - lovely! It's latin name is Pulmonaria officinalis. Other names include Jerusalem Cowslip, Abraham Isaac and Jacob, Good Friday Plant, Mary's Tears and Thunder and Lightning.
Geoffrey Grissom in his Englishman's Flora says - 'It was a common fancy throughout Europe that drops of the Virgin's milk or the Virgin's tears have fallen on the leaves and caused the spots.'

To two watery observations - the new spring at the top of the small fall has dried but I can still hear water running underground and the new spring by the eucalyptus has got worse so I must drain it as the grass is a quag.

Someday.

The other day a picture frame came in and enormous cardboard box but, rather than recycle it, I have covered the compost heap to be left through the summer. When it rains the card will sink onto the top and enclose it all, let it compost. I know, it looks scruffy, but I have done this before and it seems to help.
  What are these I hear the cry - well they are crocosmia corms year on year on year. Montbretia can become a pest and is liable to escape the garden but it will grow where much else fails.
These are the bog standard orange ones but we do have good old Lucifer and a couple of yellow varieties as well.

The cattle are out in the field below the house for the first time.

 

And in a reflective mood the water lily leaves are rising from the depths of the pond.

Unfortunately spirogyra is also spreading under the carpet of duckweed so out with the rake on a pole and haul it out.