At last some colour is coming into the garden with the spring bulbs. The water has returned to the little stream at the back of the garden and the daffodils we planted years ago are surviving and expanding, along our forest walk.
The front garden, unfortunately, has been chosen by moles as their new home. Soon the lawn will be getting cut regularly and we will have to live with the mole hills. Somehow brown circles are less noticeable than the brown heaps of soil.
More irritating is the appearance of lots of lesser Celandine everywhere in the garden. Even more irritating is that I suspect I have spread the seeds myself when I mulch the borders with leaves gathered from the trees growing at the bottom of the back garden. I accept the lesser Celandine there as it has always been there but it seems happier in the sunnier borders and quickly produces masses of little bulbils that are impossible to eradicate.
The bees used to ignore the lesser Celandine but now the flowers are in the light they visit them. A small compensation as the bees are spoiled for choice at the moment.
Our first plum tree has finished flowering but the second one has started and I see peach and ornamental flower trees opening in nearby gardens.
We decided to plant a new tub of bulbs this year. It is fun to look through the bulb catalogues in the autumn. We had decided to use scilla as the early flowers as the muscari of our previous pot had eventually taken it over. Kourosh was given more leeway with the colour scheme.
It certainly brightens these dull days but we did not get the progressive growth of the previous pot. Everything seemed to come up almost at the same time. I think it might have been partly due to the weather but the tulip “Stresa” seems particularly early.
I think we appreciated this shot of colour in a particularly dull spring but we have had one sunny day with temperatures soaring into the lower 20’s this week!
The most exciting moment this week was seeing the male Osmia cornuta flying around the bee boxes. Perhaps Spring is coming at last?
I even heard my first cuckoo this week.
a french garden 