Joys of Spring

Oh you devil - do your really think it is time...? I was wondering today... It was so warm as i jogged along, dressed for the summer...
This is what it was like out there today:

Brief beams of golden midday sun
Low in the mild January sky
Light the white pinions of tufted duck
The bellies of gulls
The throats of swans
And the brows of coots, on the lookout for love
Bring colour to glittering heads of drakes
Golden reed beds and firework flares of dogwood:
Ash, lime, amber, orange, crimson.
Above
A buzzard struggles to hover
A high flock of lapwing swirls
And a smudge of rainbow
Surprises

(sorry about the unpoetic tufted duck. i hoped they might be goldeneyes but not according to the bird bible... )

I love tufted ducks!

Saw a pair of robins courting this morning, and the eider ducks are chattering...

I love your description of 'sturdily leaved' bags.

Another Joy of Spring.....my first seed catalogue arrived this morning!

I have heard foxes doing a bit of preliminary barking. Not yet really letting rip, though.

This thread has gladdened my heart!
Jess - what a sight you gave me from 'your' lake.

I have posted a thread about a sunshine emoticon - hope you'll all vote for one.

bagitha - Had a great picture of you with torch in the deep dusk.

I'm not quite ready to leave the Joys of Winter yet - the weather forecast is promising a very nippy few days to come.

I'm expecting to have to return to the Joys of Winter, butty. It's just that all these bloody southerners with their mild weather spurred me on , and there are early signs of spring, even here, though the general dampness keeps things feeling cold. Mind you, our back door moat ran dry merely damp today. It'll rain again tomorrow.

Frisky squirrels.

bagitha and Jess

A perky
Robin Redbreast
Perches patiently
Upon the roof of
Bloshy cat's apartment.
Rory enjoys his brunch -
After which
He sits upon
The doormat -
Washes himself
With the utmost care -
And leaves the perky bird
No more than
A leap away
To finish off the scraps.

ENOUGH already garden!
The first 2 crocuses out. A pulmonaria and a grape hyacinth peeping.
Warm weather and a teeny bit of sun in the garden got me out with secateurs and loppers. Off with your heads fuschia and roses. You've had your run of luck. You're starting to look terribly wrong.
Now the lawn is strewn with debris and the under gardener has, strangely, not appeared. I think I must have had someone wealthy in my family tree that had picker uppers following them around. And i got that gene in a double dose.
I would much prefer to carry on lopping. So much more fun than picking up prickly stuff...

You will be glad to know I did the grown up thing and picked up all my thorny twigs. Very grateful to the council for those big green wheely garden waste bins.
It is a bit unnerving all this herbaceous stuff that hasn't properly died back.
Garden now looks more like a proper winter garden with just a couple of teeny peeping spring things. Except the darn grass needs cutting.

That got me out for a bit of snipping jess - rather aimlessly I have to say, but my heart wasn't in it - so my under-gardener didn't have any work to do at all. ! I ended up looking forlornly at my empty rain gauge. I want something to measure and record, dammit...

Yes well if you are not well then you will be a bit aimless.
I have a plan to get rid of 3 rose bushes .... one because my rose bed is just congested (DH, In David Austen gardens "cant we have just one more"...)
and 2 cos the wall they are against is just too darn dry and shady.
But will have to wait for green bins to be emptied

We have some snowdrops out in our garden.

Oh JessM - wish I could take your soon to be orphaned roses off your hands. Isn't there really somewhere else you could put them instead of the green bin. .

Snowdrop are just delightful - lucky you crosstitchgill

Not really Butternut. It was a new house 7 years ago. And what do you do - plant too many things to fill up the garden...
I have got 5 roses that are small climbers. 2 are happy, one is ok. 1 is unhappy - it was glorious the first few years (Teasing Georgia) but now it has too much competition from nearby plants I think. I have hacked it right back and need to fertilise like mad.
ttp://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=4258
The two against the dry and shady wall are supposedly Ok for this position (New Dawn - normally a trouper and Golden Showers - funny name huh!) but it is not working out.
But they are leggy, diseased and really not happy. Pity cos I love New Dawn.

www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=656

Depends how early it comes! Too early for me. I think you may have gathered I'm NOT a morning person!!!

JessM How about putting your rose bushes on to Freecycle? I'm sure someone would be delighted to take them away and give them a good home.

www.freecycle.org/group/United%20Kingdom

And if you put them on Freecycle, you could stipulate that the person who wants them can have the privilege of digging them up. Roses have tenacious roots!

I freecycled a lot of plants before we moved to Scotland. My Oxfordshire garden was packed with wild flowers that I'd lovingly encouraged but the people who were buying the house were going to turn the front garden into a car park, so I asked freecyclists to come and dig up what they wanted. Got a lot of responses. Things like aquilegia, cowslips, violets, even forgetmenots, were very popular, to name but a few!

A wild flower garden versus a car park? Adult grandson's eloquent response would be...'A NO-BRAINER'

My father, who died a few years ago, bought us a lovely home in the 70's. The front garden was full of hybrid tea roses, lovingly cultivated by the owner and newly refreshed with 30 tons of best Cheshire topsoil. Yes - he did - the front garden was flagged over so my dad could put an extra car on there! He didn't blink an eye when passers-by made caustic comments.

Jess, I've had New Dawn and Golden Showers in the past. Agree about New Dawn - lovely. The only one remaining of our original ones is Sympathy, a beautiful deep red. I am nurturing it carefully!

Just realised it must be well over forty years old now!!!