APRIL!!!

Well, I think TS Eliot was wrong - April is not the cruellest month - that is a contest between December and January - the first for all the hype over Christmas and the second because winter feels like it is never ending.

The Prunus shirotae is out, the great white cherry soon to follow. The shape the shirotae has taken leaning over the curved path to the veg beds is a delight and something I have taken a photo of many times. So loveliest of trees the cherry now - Housman had it right.

And the Victoria plum is flowering so we are hoping to be frost free, do not want the flowers blighted, want the fruit.

The camellia by the shed, sheltered from the damaging effects of early morning sun, is flowering better than it has ever done. It is such a shame that they are not scented. That would turn a stunning bush into one even more exceptional.

To daffs - still here though some dead heading has begun - so the energy generated by the leaves goes into next year's bulb not the seed head. Bought plants on the left, best of all wild daffs on the right.

Where the stream leaves to top garden and comes down to the lawns there are plantings of daffs, primroses and wild flowers such as the golden saxifrage. It looks a lot better now the winter detritus has been cleared away. I like the fact that the stream is not in a straight line, not too formal. I am not sure that R agrees with me re my desire for vaguely controlled chaos.

The slopes of the upper garden are now carpeted in primroses, not the artificial colours of primulas but the pale yellow of the native species.

We went to Ford Park where the garden has become more of a nursery and I bought some white camassias. R got a white pulmonaria shown here and this has been put in under the white lilac.

On exploring diet and so on I have reached the conclusion that onions are fatal (well upsetting) for me so turning to advice from the Fodmap diet we have changed to using green chives. I have let the plants by the blackcurrants seed into the path so we have an ample supply to keep us happy.

There are so many flowers coming, so much colour - whether the delicate heads of Fritillaria meleagris, the snake's-head 

or the blast of colour from our first main tulips.

A friend who lives in Pembrokeshire has said they are eating their first asparagus! We are several weeks away from that. Asparagus at the end of March - almost makes one want to move south.

So went and weeded the asparagus bed and went on weeding tearing out docks and creeping buttercup, couch grass and goose grass (cleavers).
AND I have done a first mowing on half of the lawns.

Time for tea and a dry Ryvita 😢

PERSECUTION COMPLEX, AVIAN MENTAL ABERRATION

Blackbird brown bird singing in the dead of night all the time, driving me mad, waking me up and if I am not mad I am sure she is.
We have replaced our window attacking blackbird with a female, same species. Only this time she is halfway up the tall Westmorland window (a window shedding light onto the stairs, narrow and about ten feet high) where I cannot reach. Other windows still have on cling film to stop this incessant tap, bang, clatter as her bill has a go at her reflection. The film breaks up the image.
I can hear her in the background as I type. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

This is a cock blackbird for comparison. As far as I know he is sane.

The muck heap over the cattle grid is getting smaller and more spread out as the lamb gang crawl under the field gate and play King of the Castle. This scatters my precious resource so I am barrowing it down the garden to the veg beds. An extra mulch and some onto the compost heaps.
I have also been removing some of the hundreds of sycamore seedlings scattered across the garden, and ash.

This is the far corner of the garden. My strimmer man (now retired) cleared it in the autumn/winter. Since then I have mowed a bit, levelled a bit. What to do with it though we have not decided. Probably because R has not really become aware that the jungle has shrunk again and the garden got bigger.

Anyone got a Mrs Blackbird trap? Tat, tap, tap all day long, dawn to dark.
Yibbledeboobleyukbubbletibum!! I am going nuts! It is worse that water torture.

Right. change of thought - I have found my seed packets - they were on top of the old radio in my room. So now sowing is overdue. Anyway, can I really be bothered to sow anything that the slugs will just eat (and if not molluscs then mice or pigeons or something). I suppose I will have to get the sweet peas in even though a bit late. Two to a small pot and plant out when the danger of frost is over.

The stream where it comes down over the tree roots has decided to soak sideways and make the banking boggy. This will need some remedial work when I get some dry weather - come on rain!

The pots just get better and better. I must have put several layers of tulips in each. The pot in the middle is two ranunculi R bought locally. They are splendidly gaudy and cheerful. And finally there is the magic that is spring - everywhere - not just in the brown blackbird's head. Early morning sun and dew, backlit cherries and maples.

Just a minute - bye bye sun, here comes the wind and rain. Back to real British weather. Well, then I can have a lie in.
No, I cannot, that bloggy bird will be clattering its beak on the window above the stairs.

Anyone know of an avian psychotherapist?

What would Freud (not Clement), Jung, Adler (not Larry), let alone Pavlov (nothing to do with ice cream or ballet) have to say about this?


PS - Just been to Ford park garden and done my usual - not reading the instructions. It was a seed swap, so I did take seeds - including some aquilegia and meum athamanticum from my own garden, but I also took plants! Any way, we had a nice cup of tea and a chat with Sarah, and I gave her the chunk of variegated horseradish for the Ford Park garden as they had none.
Oh1 For their wonderful soil and many volunteer gardeners.