THE CATKINS ARE COMING

Yo-ho, yo-ho. 

I have been rumbled, so R says. I love gardens and plants and design but not gardening! She said this as she tidied the biggest flower bed though I had been weeding, well hoeing, the asparagus bed. 

All is not helped by an attack of vertigo, bad back and general desire to be asleep rather than  digging and shifting compost.

R is disappointed that the fallen tree up the garden has partial hidden the sweep of snowdrops into the wood.

And we have our first catkins on the hazel despite the attempts to eat the shrubs by the roe deer.

We are plagued by tiny gnats that have come from the compost of some of the house plants. Have put gravel on the top of the compost and sticky yellow cards above. Still plagued despite catching hundreds.

We bought a hellebore at a garden centre in Shropshire a while back - a lovely white one - here it is! A bit disappointing though lovely in its own right. Elsewhere we have kale and the rhubarb is starting to come into leaf.

There are other signs of spring - birds calling, buzzards circling, the heron searching for emergent frogs - but no lambs in the back field yet.

Elsewhere quince and viburnums flower - yes I know I included a pic of Viburnum bodnantense Dawn in the last blog but it looks so good. Actually only wrote the last sentence after I realised I had - not the same photo but very like it.

I am not allowed down the garden at the moment if R is out in case I topple over. Mind you a cup of tea and a nap is more the thing.

Must do my exercises for the vertigo but now have a bad back - excuses, excuses.

So I nipped out to get a rose or roses for St Valentine's Day from the garden centre - 'Sorry, we don't have any." So had to be a deep purple cyclamen. 

Jemima and friend are back on the pond. As the lower banking is not cut I wonder if she will nest in there again?

Went out today, R to tidy the back bed, me to tidy the compost heaps and try to light the bonfire - far too wet of course. And then it started raining.

Time for a cup of tea, the crossword and some rest.

GALANTHING INTO FEBRUARY

 And it's getting brighter, I think.

And I have been in the garden cutting back Cardoons and Elephant Grass.

Now, I have raised a discussion as to whether chaffinches and brambling cross breed. We had this on the trail camera -

Now it is probably a juvenile chaffinch but I can across photos of birds like this one - with a stripe on the head - and someone suggested it might be a chaffling. I mean, probably not but . . ?

Back to the dark messy garden, twigs fallen all over the place, and a gardener hoping for drier weather like this - sun through the ash branches but must cut back that ivy.

Some chance.

Anyway the garden is lit by swathes of snowdrops and promise of spring.

Some of the house plants do not look happy. I am sure I have not overwatered, if at all but the droopy aeonium has been repotted.

We went to Potato Day in Greenodd but they had no asparagus for us to use to replace lost crowns. There seemed to be plenty of seed potatoes and much else. Rosey bought a honey berry having seen it on TV.

When the world is deep into winter and monochrome there are still things to see, if a bit abstract -

Wood, dead or living takes on interesting shapes here enhanced by using monochrome photography.

It is Sunday, a frost last night and the sun is shining. A robin calls from the big cherry and I can hear the church bells a mile and a half away in Ulverston ringing in the crisp air.

And the garden? - Snowdrops, snowdrops, snowdrops.

But there is other colour 

and there is scent from the viburnum and the sarcococcus by the back door.