March 20th, 2019 - Popular posts, Spring gardening, Wildlife gardening

In the garden on 21st March 2019.

The first time I’ve sat and had a coffee in the garden this year – it’s a milestone and felt a real treat.

First coffee in the garden for this year

These lovely Epimedium flowers only look so nice because I remembered to cut off all the winter foliage in February before the flowers came out.

Delicate epimedium flowers perfect for a shady woodland area

If you don’t cut the leaves off they smother the flowers so you can’t see them.  Beautiful pale green new leaves are already coming along.  You can find them for sale at plantsforshade.co.uk  which is where I buy a lot of my mail order plants.

Some old epimedium leaves among the flowers and new leaves

These bird feeders and the bird food are from the RSPB shop. They are visited by birds all day every day of the year  – all kinds of tits, finches, woodpeckers and even robins have learned to use them.

Sunflower seeds on the left and suet nibbles on the right in RSPB feeders

Unfortunately parakeets have too.  There’s sunflower seeds on the left and suet buggy nibbles on the right. A bird feeder is so worth having and such a joy to watch the birds come and go. (except that I didn’t manage to snap one).

I protected this square pot all winter with chicken wire thinking I had planted it with bulbs but now I realise there’s absolutely nothing in it.  Something to be said for making notes and I usually do but this one slipped through.

definitely nothing coming up in this pot

Here is a vase of scented narcissi I’ve grown in pots especially for bringing into the house.

scented narcissi grown in my pots in the garden – possibly Geranium, Sweetness, Falconet, and Cheerfulness

But,

Bother.  In my last blog I wrote about growing flowers for cutting in pots but suddenly they’re all coming out at the same time!  Did I plant them all at in the same week?  Lesson learnt – plant a few every week so they don’t all flower at once.  Oh well, I’ll still cut them for the house and enjoy them but probably only a few weeks’ worth rather than a month or two.

Just the very beginning of Spring and times full of promise yet to come.  Let’s hope for some sunshine, some gentle rain, some cooling winds and hopefully some froglets in the pond.