MAY BUSTING OUT ALL OVER

 Just thought I would start with a cheerful picture.

Then have a moan about sweet peas - what is the problem between me and them? I prepare the soil assiduously, lots of feed and water etc etc. and they just shrivel and die. Admittedly not all of them - I have tied in the few straggly remains in a vain hope of a miracle.

The weather is finally warming up and I managed to mow the lawns on Thursday. 

The gardener has been and taken a load of plants from the pond. They will now sit on the bank for a while to let the creepy-crawlies get back in the water. He has taken some away for someone else's pond. He has also dug up a few hypericums as they self spread too much and replanted them away from the flower beds.

G and L want some welsh poppies, yellow and orange, so I have potted  up a plant of each.

Talking of yellow flowers the azaleas are great and their scent wafts over the woodland margin.

On the lower banking are two Viburnums - the Mariesii and its horizontal branches covered in petals and the wild Viburnum opulus or Guelder Rose.

Another flower just now coming out is the Hesperis matronalis var. albiflora, since I got it from Sarah raven it has self sown and is also 

scented.

Then there is the prettiest tree blossom - the apple.

Of course many trees are flowering now, not least the huge sycamore - this is where the endless seedlings that plague the garden originate. No wonder it is so successful in the wild. In the back hedge by the field grows the wild barberry or berberis. Not common here though there is one other locality not far away.

I wandered down to the shed to check on the seedlings and the pink strawberry is well out. Then I found a clematis in a tree I had completely forgotten about. A nice surprise.

The forget-me-nots are like a blue cloud in the flowerbeds. Self sown they are something for nothing.

We went to Muncaster Castle to see the bluebells but they were over, more or less, Anyway, good to get out in these years of the virus.

 

As are the buttercups in the grass that has been left - I do not mind that but they are a pest if they grow where I do not want them.

Elsewhere are other forgotten plants - the potatoes I missed have come up - do I remove them or just earth them up?

Perhaps I will simply cover them with layers of compost as they grow - thinking about that idea.

And so many Granny's Bonnets, columbines, aquilegias, whatever, self sown and self crossed.

Time for a break, get the soil from under my finger nails, two of the grandchildren are coming to stay so we will be busy.