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'!