Wednesday, April 13, 2016

A day of spring.

First of the Tulips.
To say the weather has been variable might be an understatement, we did manage ten continuous days without rain during the middle of March, enabling gardening work to get done, such as potato planting, but since then we have had rain just about every day. Today however was an exception, it was spring! Long may it last. We took the opportunity to have a trip out to our favourite woods expecting to find Wood Anemones out but not a sign,
but there were some early Bluebells,
Our favourite Bluebell wood.
another week or so and this wood will be a carpet of blue, why the Anemones should be late is another question
as we found another wood,
Such a beautiful flower.
a new one to us which is carpeted in white, and although there are the leaves of bluebells showing none were in flower yet.
So far it has been a strange year for plants and flowers, we had our first daffodils out on the 24th January and there are still lots of daffs. to come. We grow a lot of different varieties at least twenty different ones which probably explains the long flowering period. Fruit and veg wise things are slow this year,
Lots of bloom but no fruit yet.
 strawberries in the tunnel have been blooming for two month now but no fruit has yet set, for us that is late, we have a variety that normally will give us fruit the first week of April, yet the Rhubarb was very early we had our fist picking the second week in February.
 Even the potatoes in the tunnel have been very slow but they are at last making headway,
likewise the broad beans, but they have at last formed flowers.
Spinach seedlings.
Spinach has been sown and has germinated well
and cauliflower seedlings have also been transplanted into the tunnel. We seem to have seed trays and modules everywhere, waiting to be planted out or potted on, thankfully we have the green house so our window ledges don't become littered with seedlings.
The garden is looking lovely, it is now four years old and is showing some maturity,
the rockery also is looking lovely, although we should have given a little more though on it's construction, it's very hard to get to the back of it to weed as it up against a fence.
We have put some Muscovy duck eggs into the incubator they should be hatching the first week of may, Muscovy eggs are notoriously hard to hatch in an incubator, we normally manage a reasonable hatch, it remains to be seen how well we do this year. We will also be getting some Hubbard day old chicks, probably early in May, depending on how good or bad the weather is by then.
Another beautiful sunset.

14 comments:

  1. Your garden is looking lovely and colourful x

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  2. The rockery is splendid! I have some mutant tulips coming up stemless. Could be too few chill hours, or an unfortunate freeze I guess.

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    1. Your garden is taking shape Cole, it just takes time.

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  3. Lovely sunset photo, the woodland flowers look lovely too. We had our first bluebell appear yesterday.

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  4. The garden is lovely and im very jealous. I asked my sister over to help clean up the summer left over veggie plants and tidy up for winter crops. While i slept, she got up early and cleaned it all out. Everything. Herbs, bulbs, flowering plants etc. Everything. I have 8 empty raised beds. Its all looking so forlorn. I've decided since this is where i am at, to rest it over winter and since i'll be out of action (foot surgery in Sept) the hiatus may extend over summer. So Sad. Still, this will give me time to paint the interior of the house and maybe get back to blogging.

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    1. Oh dear Lynda, are you still speaking to her? Could you not retrieve the bulbs and herbs? It reminds me of a couple of 'helpers' we had in Spain, asked to do some weeding they destroyed a young hazel nut hedge!

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    2. Of course i am. She was so pleased with her efforts. I did find my purple sage and popped it back in with a drink. She asked me if anything was coming up (im sure she would have pulled it out) so i never mentioned the beginning of a mint plant.

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  5. I think plants are flowering at so many different times to those we expect these days, it seems most things don't follow any particular pattern any more. The rockery looks fabulous, it's wonderful to have so much colour, especially at this time of year.

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    1. Thanks Jo, yes things are well out of sync, I thought we were getting no flowers on the Camellias this year, they should be in bloom around February, I looked carefully at the bushes last week and there are flower buds, I am guessing they will be in flower in May, possible it's because we have had such a mild winter, maybe they need a cool spell which we have at last had.

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  6. The rockery is fantastic!! So much colour! Nice to see everything making progress xxx

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  7. Thanks Lauren, the daffodils have been spectacular this year as well.

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  8. This is awesome. Keep sharing great content.

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