Sunshine!

Today the sun came out, little white fluffy clouds danced across the blue sky.

In the garden spring is arriving:

crocuses and grape hyacinths have emerged,

hyacinths are in full flower, 

there are daffodils of all colours and shapes,

and the chaenomeles is in flower.

The pond is full of frogspawn :-)

And I have a new front door.  Gone is the warped, tired, wooden one that needed the postman to lean against it at times in order for me to open it,

replaced with a smart new black, composite one.  Looks like wood but won't warp and swell and doesn't have gaps for the wind to whistle through.

Hope you're all enjoying some sunshine too.

Lots of Blue and White

There's a lot of blue and white around at the moment, both in the sky and in the garden.

First of all, the whites:

clematis avalanche

dicentra spectabilis alba

exochorda

variegated white honesty 

white lilac

Next, the blues: lots and lots of forget-me-nots

forget-me-not

camassia

iris bud

It's not all blue and white though, the sky sometimes goes dark dark grey and the garden has splashes of other colours too.

cerinthe

Cerinthe self sows all over my front garden, and in the back there's more dicentra

dicentra spectabilis

 and the late flowering narcissus tresamble.

narcissus tresamble

But before I go, I must just share with you a tulip, now fully opened and all frayed and pretty -

Tulip Huis Ten Bosch

Little Tiny Springy Steps

The weather is not really conducive to gardening today as it's raining and blowing a right old hooley. But earlier on in the week we had a sunny, if very cold day and the garden was definitely showing signs of it 'nearly' being springlike.

These crocuses in the front garden were planted before I bought the house,

I love the contrast of the purple and orange,

whereas these yellow ones were only planted last autumn and I really like the subtle yellow colour.

Clematis Freckles is still flowering away, although she's quite high up in the tree so I do have to remember to look up!

And there will be crumble for tea, but not for a few weeks yet I think!

Yesterday I sowed tomatoes in the heated propagator and tomorrow I will sow leeks and plant my shallots in pots.  I'm experimenting with gardening by biodynamics this year so I couldn't sow the leeks at the same time as the tomatoes. It does seem to require pre-planning and organisation, which is where I may fall down, but at the moment it's my intention!  I'll tell you more about it another time.

Oh, and I found my lost scissors, they were under the seed compost in the shed.  'Of course' I hear you cry, 'where else would they be?'!