SPRING!

The calendar says April, the spring equinox is behind us, we have lighter evenings so it must be Spring!   At last!   Today in this corner of the world we have April showers  –  brilliant sunshine for a while followed by gentle rain and even better it is ever so slightly warmer.   The daffodils are coming out and there are still plenty more to look forward to and the hellebores are flowering better than ever regardless of bitter winds and having been buried under inches of snow for days at a time.    Leaf buds on the shrubs are swelling and in some cases leaves are starting to unfurl and there is blossom on Magnolia stellata and buds on Magnolia soulangeana.   Progress has been made with the vegetable garden, regardless of the cold and wet weather.  Fencing is in place together with rabbit wire and with a bit of luck (and hard work) we will actually grow some vegetables this year.   The rhubarb is looking promising and we are looking forward to rhubarb crumble before too long.  Two raised beds are now full of compost waiting for their first crops to be sown.

Elsewhere in the garden, I have now started weeding and clearing away dead growth.  In the space of just a week or so herbaceous perennials have burst into life,  along with the weeds.  It’s rewarding to settle down to an afternoon’s weeding and discover all the “old friends” growing back after what seems such a long cold winter.    Peony “Molly the Witch” is looking good and I hope that this year she manages more than one flower!    This plant is probably around 15 years old, bought as a very weedy specimen in a local garden centre’s “dead department” and nursed back to health.   It has moved house with us and moved at least once in this garden, maybe this will be the year it has really settled in and will manage more flowers.  The flowers are such a beautiful pale lemon colour though that one is better than none!

Wildlife is always encouraged in our garden – it is theirs just as much as ours.  However rabbits are proving very tiresome at the moment.   Finally we think the garden is completely rabbit proof but the orchard definitely isn’t.   How we wish we had put up rabbit fencing at the same time that we had the stock proof fence put in.   I’ve had to take barrow loads of loam out to fill up the holes that they have dug in the turf and now they have nibbling the bark on the fruit trees.   One poor tree has been ring barked overnight,  prompting a quick check of all the tree guards.   The job has now begun of putting in new guards round some of the trees as they outgrow the old ones.  Squirrels are always amusing, lately taking leaves out of the stack in the leaf bin to line their drey.  However who knew that squirrels chase pheasants?   I certainly didn’t until I saw a very alarmed hen pheasant running across the lawn with a squirrel in hot pursuit!   Slightly calmer wildlife visitors have been a pair of Mandarin ducks,  so pretty and what a surprise to see in the middle of the lawn one morning.   Mallards usually visit around this time of  year for a day or so but we’ve never seen Mandarins before.

For now though the sun is shining again and the garden beckons….