Four seasons in a day.

A spring bouquet.

Normally you would have to go traveling to experience four seasons in a day, but not this year, most days of last week  gave us a variety of seasons. From warm, at times quite hot, t-shirt type weather to hail or even snow showers an hour or so later, plus some rain thrown in for good measure, no wonder the garden doesn't know what the season is. Asparagus has given us a couple of spears then frost stopped growth and we had to recover the plants with crop cover.

Strawberries in bloom in the tunnel for the past two months, and only now have we ripening fruit, a month later than we would normally have our first pickings,

but the broad beans are looking good and also the early tunnel potatoes.

 The Camellias which should have flowered February/March are only now flowering. We just hope that the weather becomes a little more stable so the plants can get on with growing.

The daffodil season has been very extended this year, we had the first ones out on the 24th January and we still have some just in bud,

this might be partly due to so many different varieties that we have growing,

well over twenty different ones, a lot of them are perfumed.

I love these daffs, called Twinkling Yellow, the blooms are only the size of my thumb nail.

They have been spectacular this year.

Not too much slug damage to the leaves.

The other plants that have done very well are the Trout lilies, they have multiplied from last year which is fine, I just love them.

The weeds on the pathway are parley.

Things are coming on well in the tunnel including the weeds,

I now count parsley as a weed as it has self-seeded and the pathways are covered with seedlings.

The peach tree has a reasonable amount of fruit set on it, but not too much, so we wont need to thin out the fruitlets.

Another favourite Daff, and it's perfumed.

I don't know where the time goes, it seems to fly by, it's hard to believe that we are nearly half way through the year, maybe gardening makes the time fly, everything does seem to revolve around what is ready for harvesting or what needs planting out.

All the hens and ducks are laying well, we now have a glut of eggs, well over what we need for our customers so we are freezing quite a lot of these eggs, beaten and then frozen they will be good for a year.

I have also made some lemon curd, I will do another batch in the next few days.
We have now just about come to the end of the winter veg,

Last of the parsnips, this years have already germinated.

we've had our last parsnip and have now used our last onion but the ones in the tunnel should be ready by the end of May. We still have carrots plenty of chard and the first of this years spinach will be ready in a few days, so not too big a hungry gap.
A few more photos of the Daffodils.

And a couple of photos of the garden.

Freesias.

Wild Violets.