Happy Easter

The reason my house/life is untidy is because I never throw anything away. I've got a number of theories for this - war baby, it may all 'come in useful'! Frugal Scottish/ Yorkshire parentage. Creative - I might do something with it. ('Might' being the operative word!) Whatever the excuse, I've got drawers crammed with stuff and here is just a bit of it, trotted out for Easter.

Birds' nests (with unrelated eggs.)

A very small white rabbit from my childhood.

Can you spot it?

An assortment of tin and pot eggs,

and a very fine beaded bird, a present from Africa.

Hanging baskets.

All that's missing now is chocolate!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE.

Good Friday

The weeks pass quickly, another Friday, another day of sunshine and cold winds. I pointed my camera at the sky, nothing special to see. The horse chestnut tree in the centre of the photo is about to burst into flower but the walnut tree, on the right of the picture, is barely in leaf.

I skulked in the greenhouse out of the wind. There isn't an inch of staging left now that I'm potting on the seedlings. To make space I have most of my auriculas outside. Those inside  are just starting to flower.

I love them!

At the end of the day,  what's this?

Three balloons heading towards the village.

Oh, good, a subject for Skywatch Friday! 

A red balloon and my rather battered red flowers.

Sunshine!

This is our third day of sunshine and it really does transform every thing. It is warm enough to open the french windows in my workroom that lead into the greenhouse.

Plants are still skulking inside waiting for the end of very chilly nights.

The solar fairy lights have been charged by the sun. I've draped them around the roof beams and the largest lemon tree and it's lovely at dusk to sit in this space.

Outside I've finally got some seeds in the ground - and put up barricades against cats and pigeons!

The 'St Patrick's Day' daffodils whiten as they age and. in my opinion, become ever more attractive.

And in the garage greenhouse the auricles are just getting to the exciting stage!

Going greener!

Yesterday the sun shone and there was no cold wind. Everything stood up straight and smiled in the warmth and the birdsong was glorious.

We received a phone call at breakfast, the firm scheduled to see us next month had had a cancellation, they were in the area, could they come round in twenty minutes? Yes they could.

So now we are prepared to be a little bit greener because we have our own power point in the garage for charging an electric car!

The hedge on our northern boundary is kept well clipped, but this spring the spiky, prickly section of it has evaded the demon barber and burst into blossom. I think it looks lovely. "DON'T cut it back just yet!"

 So Himself concentrated on giving the bay tree a bit of a haircut instead.

Today it is bitterly cold and I've only had the briefest possible foray into the garden to pick some flowers.

There's a good choice of colour to be found now

for Jane's Flowers in the House.

Morning mist for Skywatch Friday

Woke to a silent, mist-covered morning,

slowly lifting as the sun strengthens.

It's going to be

a

glorious day.

Blossom and morning mist for Skywatch Friday.

A code in the dose

I should be in Stratford-on -Avon with friends, looking forward to an evening at the theatre. The special couple of days away had been booked for months and eagerly anticipated. But no, here I am, home alone, confined to quarters with a cold. 

I've been doing a bit of pootling in the garden. Yesterday I cleared all the winter debris from the half barrels before the rain set in. Today they are pleasingly full of clean water. Just the sort of thing that makes a gardener happy! 

I found the camellia label and picked a few blooms. I had completely mis-named her in the last posting, she is 'E.G. Waterhouse.' You can see from the discolouration that she doesn't appreciate wind and rain.

But then, who does! Oh, isn't she glorious.

The garden is changing with every day. The herbaceous borders are filling with soft, new growth, perennial flowers

AND weeds.

All the yellow tones of early spring are starting to fade as other colours emerge. The pear trees are about to bloom. The fruits always succumb to pear tree mite so I don't get too optimistic about a good crop at this stage. Should I spray? I grow organically, so it goes rather against the grain. If you have any advice, please give it.

The potatoes are planted and I've erected pigeon barriers for the onions and sprouts. I neglected to put down slug pellets so half my sprout and red cabbage seedlings were eaten overnight. (This is just the sort of thing that makes a gardener very unhappy, not to mention mad!)

Inside the seedlings are growing leggy, waiting for the soil to warm so that they can be planted out.

We live opposite  stables and there is a fair bit of action as horse boxes and delivery vans swing in and out of the entranceway. A large trailer of straw has come into our wall with results rather like that created by a wrecking ball - short straw indeed! A tumble-down wall and destruction of hedgerow, all our privacy removed.

The young man who did it neglected to come and inform us but Himself walked down to the stable yard and found bits of our hedging still attached to the trailer. Now I am waiting, impatiently, for his father to come and put the sorry mess to rights.  (You can tell the sort of mood I'm in, a code in the dose, code, windy weather and a broken wall!)

Life's a bit up and down.

But the red peony is blooming

so I'll concentrate on the 'up'!