ALMOST APRIL

Well, the grass may have riz but I have unriz it with the mower, at least the shorter cut bits.
We were out watching a high tide swirl in the bay whe R spotted a pale pink flowering currant in the hedge. I do not think it belonged to anyone but was an escape. Anyway there are three small cuttings down in the veg beds now next to the rhubarb.

With some mowing done the pond is looking a lot better even if the heron needs a good coat of paint. The mallard are back so we must have done something right.

It is dry (dare I say it) but the weather could return to this at any moment. We have not yet forgotten the Beast from the East that assaulted us last year. Apparently in many parts of Europe they refer to that spell of bad weather as the Russian Beast. 

Back to the garden where we have swatches of primroses, patches of wood anemones and dog violets (the ones that have no scent).

   

 and an errant celandine.

We are still waiting for the buds on the camellia in the edge of the wood to flower but it is acting as a shelter to these seven spot ladybirds.
I have yet to see the carnivorous Harlequin ladybird in our garden though, oddly, I was assailed by them last year on the eleventh tee on the golf course.


The Victoria plum is in full blossom and the damsons not far behind but cold weather predicted for next week and I fear for the fruit.

I am shifting manure by the barrow load, have cut out a willow, several ash seedlings and a rhododendron ponticum from the bottom hedge ditch.

Elsewhere the forgetmenots are getting going and fritillaries flowering in the top banking grass. 

It is a pity our quince is ornamental - but beautiful, a gift from Dorothy R.

I keep going out to test the long grass for cutting but it remains stubbornly damp. So I just cut some broccoli instead for supper.
First broad beans and spinach sown.

Next day it is almost dry enough to cut and I have a go. So, lawns all cut for first time, broad beans and spinach in, first rhubarb from under forcing pot tonight.

Life can be a load of rhubarb (especially in The House of Commons). It is interesting if at times tedious to see democracy in action - or is it inaction?

Perhaps we should build (or have a wall built) between politicians and reality. 
So it is okay for some Tory Brexiteers to change their mind and vote for Teresa's deal at the third time of asking. After all we live in a democracy. 
But it is not okay to have another referendum, that is not democratic? 
We hear - "The people have decided." That is it.
Perhaps some of the people have changed their minds too? Opinion polls suggest they have.
If Brexiteers are so sure of their position what have they to fear from another referendum?
They do not want one because they think they would lose, not because such a move would be undemocratic.

Shut up Duncan and get back to the real world - gardening.

THE GRASS IS RIZ

Spring is sprung. The garden is waiting to explode - cherries, plum, damson, greengage and pear all with bursting buds.

We still have broccoli and chives, will have rhubarb very soon.

The little birds is on the wing etc etc.



Then there is the longing to escape, the hammering of lead flashing, the drilling and cutting - it will be good to have the house back again.

The world is waiting. It seems ridiculous that we are past the spring equinox. (But not as ridiculous as politics in the UK.)

I got out the box of seed packets to organise what to sow and when.   
Some of the old ones went in the bin - I find old parsnip seeds are particularly unreliable - and discovered the packet of wild flower seed given to R in remembrance of Dorothy R. Now we have to decide where to scatter it.

R ordered an Eucalyptus gunnei from Sarah Raven in the autumn and it has arrived and been planted near the far hedge. So well packed the plant must have cost less than the packaging.

So I was up a ladder repairing the shingle roof on the bottom shed between light rain showers. Then I noticed the pond is now a bit shallow so - ??? Then I nipped my little finger in the ladder and have a nice bruise. Later I scalded my lip on hot porridge straight out of the microwave by licking the spoon. My knees creak, my back twinges . . . 

Enough moaning - 

The snowdrops are done so it is dividing and replanting time, the daffs are better than ever as are the primroses We even have an errant ragged robin in flower. 

 One of the delights of spring is the small green and golden saxifrage by the stream.




And the heaps of sticks just grow and grow, a habitat for all sorts of small creatures, but, as far as we know, not a hedgehog - but with badgers on the loose around here we may not get any.



How is the extension going I hear no one cry?

 Slow but steady I say though a loaded skip blocking the way in to the gardenias its downside (and its upside as I cannot get through there.)

Then they moved their van on Friday and the wheelbarrow can get through - shifting manure, finishing digging over the bed by the bottom shed, cutting back the willow, cutting back autumn fruiting raspberries and up at the back of the house my assistant gardener (otherwise known as the boss) is transplanting snowdrops.



And we have our first camellias, though late, and our first dandelion.

MARCH WINDS DO BLOW

Having moaned about the rain in the last blog, come last Sunday morning I looked out of the kitchen window and it was snowing! Long time since it was 20C in February. So we decided to go to Sizergh Castle Gardens, have lunch in the National Trust Cafe and walk the gardens. It hailed and blew and sleeted and snowed and the sun shone intermittently - in fact everything. It is a week of storms - well gales and rain mainly coming with recurrent low pressure systems from the west.

So Gareth came and blew out the lights - well the power went off - and stayed off for just over 20 hours. We learned how to boil a kettle on the woodburner etc etc. The gale blew and the rain came in the roof where the new dormer is going. The garden is full of fallen sticks (which I will have to collect)(as R will not).

I am playing scavenger from the builder's skip - bits of discarded wood and broken slates etc etc. R just shakes her head.

The ducks have, I think, decided not to nest at our pond but at a nearby tarn - they still come for breakfast though.

Down in the veg beds the chives are progressing well and I have put in rows of bay and rosemary cuttings.

 

Outside the kitchen doors the variegated euphorbia is in flower and thriving - as I have said before it is one of R's favourites and a delight on a dark day.

 Thought the garden has many varieties of daffodils and narcissi the wild daffodil - Pseudo narcissus pseudonarcissus - is the best - delicate and beautiful.







Then as I wander the garden I find a surprise - a marigold (calendula).

Now is the time to admit we have been away since Friday, escaping builders, in the north of the county at Wetheral. Anyway we would not have been in the garden on Saturday as it poured with rain causing floods.

We came back, after a rather depressing morning service at Carlisle Cathedral (we were almost the youngest people in a sparse congregation), via the west coast and walked on the vast expanse of Drigg Shore. This is okay as long as you do not look north to the monstrosity that is the Sellafield nuclear processing plant etc.

The feeling of space there is a wonderful and less well known corner of Cumbria and The Lakes.

THE OLD MAN IS SNORING

It's raining it's pouring . . 

What to do on a wet miserable day? Make blackcurrant jam of course. The fruit softens so much faster from the freezer and it only takes a short while before the jam is done.

  I am sitting listening to the repetitive drip of rain from the scaffolding outside my window as storm Freya (what a silly idea naming storms) weeps.
  More manure is on the fruit, more compost on the roses.

And now all is super soggy, grass is boggy, builders in the bedroom, builders in the living room, each room made smaller by a huge sheet of polythene, girders going in, windows going in, we are going out (except it is pouring down) so we are staying in.



The only bit of sunshine in the garden comes from the masses of catkins on the hazel in the bottom hedge.

It was Friday night - no it was not - it was Saturday at 5 in the morning when I woke with thunderous rain hammering on the roof - the old man stopped snoring!

The garden is full of spring promise - flowering currant, the ornamental quince and bankings full of daffodils.

There are abundant primroses below the woodland and an assorted tumble of bulbs flowering under the magnolia stellata which is fat with bud.





Leaves are coming - on the roses and the fruit bushes like these gooseberries on the right.

The kolkowitzia (beauty bush) is well in leaf. R asks what can she do in the garden - we need to stay off the sodden grass - and before I utter a word she says that she will not pick up sticks in the wood.

I have just seen that the dreaded ash dieback is spreading - not here yet, fingers crossed as we have a lot of mature ash trees in our little wooded area.

As a bad habit I do not label plants and this leads to mysteries - like what is this? It is not grass and I suspect it might be a type of allium - we will see.

So this afternoon between showers I need to power wash some of the paving as it has become dangerously slippery.
And now it is Saturday afternoon, breezy and sunny and no showers. R has tidied the primula bed and weeded the asparagus bed. I have cut back vegetation by the decking and cleaned that after power washing as above. 

Cock pheasant by the pond -

Time for a nice cup of decaf tea.

A FALSE SPRING?

It is Wednesday and by lunchtime it is 20C in the shade. Rising with the sun at 7 am, a pink sky over Bowland, a layer of polluted air hanging over Lancaster and Morecambe, I feel a sense of place and belonging.

The wood pigeons nesting in the old Christmas trees by the shed are in full voice, a song thrush is tripling, a robin greets the day, a pair of mallard are on a pond of frogspawn.

(So, which comes first - the frog or the spawn?)

Our bedroom is cordoned off with sheets of polythene as the builders break through from the new extension.

Flowers have erupted in response to this false spring - daffodils, crocus, celandines, daisies . . . change is so fast every photo is out of date by the next day.

The grass is growing, needs a cut (but too wet in the morning)(anyway I cannot get the mower past the builders van)(I know - I could ask them to move but . . .)

There are other flowers - pulmonaria, banks of wild primroses and hellebores fighting through the builder's rubble and stacks of paving stones.

Down in the pond insects are creeping out of the water onto dry stems ready to expand their wings and fly - dragonflies and damselflies.
Waterboatmen ripple the mirror-like surface as the moorhens paddle across with their big feet.

Back outside the kitchen door I notice my almost tame cock pheasant has a damaged tail feather - has he been in a scrap with another cock pheasant?

And the resident mallard are not going away. If not on the pond they sit on the shed roof or wander up the bank towards the house.

One thing that does concern me, as a consequence of having our summer in February, is that the buds on the plum and pear are beginning to break. If we get a hard frost on the blossom we lose the fruit for the year.

Signing off as a storm named Freya spirals in. It is raining, windy and I am listening to a Howling Wolf CD.