OH! TO BE IN ENGLAND

April is here, Tuesday and 19C, we sat with the doors open, lunch outside, pheasants, squirrels, rabbits roaming through our Eden, feeders busy - blue, great and coal tits, chaffinch, bullfinch, goldfinches, blackbirds, robins and song thrushes singing, the odd hoot of a tawny owl, mallard on the pond, heron frogging, lambs in the back field, etc etc. Even the flies are sunbathing.

Then bad weather is sent from the Arctic and we have frosts and so on. Glad the tender plants are not out in the garden. Gales are smashing the tulips.

Down the bottom the pond is in two halves, right shallower and weed free, left, as shown, clarted but deeper. So out with the improvised rake, a garden rake with an extra broom handle gaffer taped to it to make it long enough.

Then we have reflections even if the wildlife has less cover from the visiting heron.

Last year, or the year before we planted a new eucalyptus and it is now seven feet tall. Of course not as tall as the mighty tree R planted twelve years ago - must be fifty or sixty feet in height now.

The first camellia is covered in flowers and the viburnum bonariensis has been splendid for a few months. The flowering currants have benefitted from a prune in the winter.

Hellebores,  wood anemones and lent lilies (wild daffs) are doing well.

The primrose banking is showing the benefits of annual division and replanting, soon we will have a yellow carpet at the edge of the trees.

We have been given four small delphinium plants and are looking forward to them flowering later in the year. And a chunk of gunnera which I have split in two. I hope they will be ok but could have done with a bit of root like when dividing and moving rhubarb.

Lawns mown, started to fill the new compost bins, spring is springing.

Ho, ho, I have fallen for an old trick on Facebook with an advert for a Stihl mini chainsaw from Real Wood. What I missed was a choice between a manual and an electric version - just ordered one. It took ages to come from the other side of the world and all it was was a bit of special wire between two small handles!

It arrived today from China in a tiny envelope.

So ho, ho, ho.

The advert was definitely deceptive but did I really expect a chainsaw for so little - well, R says, knowing me, probably. She has mentioned there word gullible a few times.