Blackthorn weather..

 At this time of year the greenhouses are crammed with plants as I wait for the weather to warm up enough for me to put them outside. Some of them are getting rather leggy. Like the seedlings, I'm happy to be tucked up under glass to enjoy the sun without any accompanying chilling wind. We haven't had rain for quite a while and the fruit trees are all in blossom. We had yet another delivery of wood this week and the woodman described it as 'blackthorn weather'. I'd not heard this expression before. He told me that when the blackthorn is absolutely full of white blossom, as it is just now, it is the result of a wet winter followed by a cold spring.

There is an electric pump in the greenhouse water trough that makes a pleasant tinkling sound as I sit and soak up the warmth.

The auricles are coming into flower, while outside the glass the pots of tulips are taking a bit of a bashing!

Happy Easter

                                          Wishing you a 

                VERY HAPPY EASTER

British Summer Time

 It has been a long, hard winter without contact with family and friends. I've always got plenty to fill my days and have a husband who still, after well over half a century, continues to make me laugh, but even so so it has felt rather bleak at times. But this coming weekend is the start of British Summer Time, how cheering! The garden has suddenly burst into action, it is the time of year when everything promises.

I've been clearing the vegetable patch ready for planting, moving the forget-me-not flowers that always seed themselves freely all over the place. They are easy to lift and plant as edging to give a mist of blue in the coming months.

Stakes in place for the climbing French beans.

The artichoke plants have taken a hit from all the cold and rain and it is too soon to know if they will survive. While it is easy enough to clear the ground in the open beds it is another matter to remove the weeds that grow around the fruit bushes. Primroses have seeded themselves very freely here as well and look so pretty that I'm loathe to disturb them.

They get everywhere, tucked in here in a row of chives!

It is a pleasure to wander into the garden and pick some of my favourite flowers.

Even a little bit of sunshine at the end of the day!

Water, water everywhere.

 It is saying something about my present quality of life when a man coming to dig a hole in our drive is the most exciting thing to happen in my week/month. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that a pool of water had sprung up in front of the garage and we were having to dodge around it if we needed to get the car out. Since we have been going nowhere for months on end this hasn't been a problem. We have had so much rain that water is everywhere and I wasn't unduly concerned, the water table must be at it's highest. Did we have an underground spring? "It's annoying," I told Himself, "but it will disappear once the weather dries." But he is cut from a different cloth. He had a poke about and announced that the water was running. A phonecall to the waterboard brought a man out immediately. Leaks are taken seriously - the country is awash with them. The man tested the pool and announced that it was drinking water. Quelle horreur! Some years ago a small leak had appeared on the road outside our bolthole in the Yorkshire Dales. No great surprise given the enormous brutes of farm tractors that trundle past. That escape of water had cost us hundreds of pounds, were we in for another large bill?

The very next day a couple of men appeared with shovels. I'd already scraped some of the surface stones to one side
 

A broken old clay pot.

Himself inspects the replacement.

Excitement over, it's mended.

Sheds

Snow still lay on the ground when I woke this morning and the sky was an unpromising dull, leaden grey. Nothing to make me rush out of bed! We have a number of small outbuildings and sheds about the garden, One of the former kennels now has shelves where the apples are stored, another houses paint cans, the scaffolding tower and assorted junk. There is a garden store  full of  tools and flowerpots and a separate small freezer room with a tall and a chest freezer crammed with garden produce. A wooden shed houses the lawn mower. But the shed that we appreciate the most on days such as these is situated just outside our front door, tucked out of sight behind a rather straggly fir tree. Can you see it?

We painted it a dark colour so that it will not attract the eye.

I really dislike dank days and low light levels, the weeks around the end of January and the month of February are the lowest times in my year. But this little hut is the solution! We wrapped up against the thin falling sleet and took a shortened version of our daily walk. When we got back home Himself said, "Fancy a sauna?"

It's the best shed we've ever bought!

Just room enough for us both.

And no, should you ask, I have no intention of rolling in the snow.

Snow

This morning we woke to a light covering of snow and I wandered round the garden to take a look at the transformation that it brings.

Shrubs, flower heads and bushes were all capped in white.

The frames that support the herbaceous summer plants look skeletal in the borders. Just a few leaves of snowdrops and daffodils peeping through.

All quiet by the lake.

Duck prints all along the path!

When the sun came out we had our usual daily walk up the road. The snow was already thinning. Footprints told us that a few dog walkers had been out before us. There were also rabbit prints, a bit of excitement for the dogs!

It was lovely.

We had a takeaway for lunch, a traditional Sunday roast beef  with Yorkshire pud from the local pub.

Delicious - just the thing after a walk in the snow!