HERE WE GO

 The team are here remaking the paths and a seating area.

Blossom is everywhere, wonderful spring.

Chiffchaffs and willow warblers singing like mad and down on the pond a great white egret!!

R has had two swallow/martin boxed put up and hop the tree sparrows leave them alone.

So loads of pics blossom first -

So the petals are falling like snow (and me) making the paths slippery.

Camellias are flowering - we have three, a pink, a red and one which is pink but sports white flowers.

So we are having new paths laid where the veg beds were and a round seating area.

And not all pants that give pleasure are "cultivated."

Golden saxifrage

Ash

Dandelion

Primrose

Cowslip

Ans by no means least Bellis perennis - the good old daisy.

And more soon when I can limp out into the garden with my camera.

PS our new grandson is growing -

WHITE IS RIGHT?

 For all the colours in the garden, and I include green, white is so important. And the biggest white we have are our Rambling Rector roses, one a mass by the old well and the other to the top of the old ash.

There are more whites - 

Deutzia,

Elder,

Daisy bush,

Philadelphus Belle Etoile,

White rosebay,

And the grey thornless hawthorn we saw first Holker Hall, Ox-eye daisies sown on the upper banking.

So having mentioned whites I suppose we should say a bit about light greys like the cardoon,

the chewed up mullein - taken a handful of moth caterpillars of the leaves, and one of my favourites the variegated horseradish.

Elsewhere we have three grey foliaged tree in the bottom garden - there weeping pear, the poplar and the eucalyptus. In fact despite being blown over in a storm the poplar is now tallest.

So after that what have we been up to? The newish bed with roses is a carpet of creeping buttercup and we have been filling wheelbarrows with it.

The lower banking has been strimmed and I have cut back the vegetation around the pond. Yesterday we had a visitor -

No wonder we have no frogs, toads and newts at the moment - or none I have seen. They might be hiding.

It is so good to have a little warmth and sunlight filtering through the trees.

So, having rabbited on about white and grey here is one of our glorious peonies.

SPRING?

He asks as the hail hits the paving. Yes we did see our first swallow today and the ospreys at Foulshaw have an egg but the wind is cold and it has been so wet.

We also saw a tree creeper on the cherry.

The eucalyptus has shed its lower bark into a neat heap.

And we have had a harlequin ladybird, spectabilis, here - it is an invader and sadly eats other ladybirds.

Seedlings are everywhere, carpeting the path to the pond, even a sycamore behind the wiper on R's car.

The young trees have interesting colours in the fresh leaves. Have to pull them up or they would take over. Also have to deflower the rhubarb (if that is the right expression?)

We did wonder if we were going to get no cowslips but they are coming late. The Stonefield Castle rhododendron flower has lost its pink and is now white.

As one walks the woodland there is a wonderful scent and it is our rhododendron we bought in Matlock Bath some years ago.

And the Rambling Rector by the old well is out of control - will need hard pruning after it has flowered.

There is other blossom besides the cherries - greengage, damson and pear for example -

Down by the pond, still spawnless, the iris leaves and ferns give good vertical shape and the kingcups are flowering.

Elsewhere Tom's flowering currant is great and there are forget-me-nots sown all over the place.

There are also wild flowers like the cuckoo pint, bluebell and dog violet by the wood.

Sarah Raven's tulips are coming into flower in a pot outside the kitchen and I have put in the first sweet peas after loads of well rotted horse manure - hungry plants. I have also potted up five hollyhocks that arrived today in the post. Not had a lot of success with these before but here goes. So lawn, well some of it, had its first scalping . Spring is coming and the sun was warm on my back today, just a pity about the chilly breeze.