Joys of Spring

It has been beautiful here to-day on The Wirral the sun is only just going down behind some clouds but it is still quite warm,*mr glamma* has put a vast amount of bizzie lizzies in this pm and the pots look good again after the winter,we where lucky to get a really good deal with them at Aldi 20 plants for £2.69 and every one is good,so the whole of the front pots done for under £10.00 brillant !!!

I have frogspawn at last! Masses of it. My pond is a mass of slimey, cavorting, croaking frogs. I counted about 70 where do they all come from? Why do they all sit amongst the frogspawn, are they protecting it? They did'nt manage to protect it at dusk when 3 blackbirds stood on the edge of the pond having a feast.

Beautiful sunny peaceful day her in Cheshire, sat by the pond reading while Mr HP did some gardening.

Lucky people with sunshine! Send some of it up north, would you?

70 frogs is pretty good going, HP!

I haven't seen a single frog! But lots of spawn

If there's lots of frogspawn there must have been more than a single frog, jeni. That's biology.

I know! I got an A level in it! But I have zNOT seen one!! I know about parthenogenesis, but that requires one entity!

Spring, spring, spring! My garden is waking up too.
My sister just phoned and they have been eating outside for two days.
Thinks though......going to have to mow the lawn sometime soon...

Mine was mowed on Monday.

I had my garden landscaped without grass! Terraced with three patios and beds in between. Looks good as long as you don't inspect the weeds.

Wonderful bank of primroses out ...basking in the sunshine!

Snap Annobel! When we moved here we purposefully bought a house with a small garden, having lived in a house with enough grass for all the usual children's paraphernalia including football goals! We then had it landscaped with two patios joined by a series of deep, wide steps between easily looked after beds. We now have time to enjoy the garden without the tyranny of mowing and, I have discovered, I enjoy gardening!

Just filled a jug of flowering witch hazel, picked on my walk.

Lovely

I have just found a single little wild violet growing in my lawn grass. Completely unplanted by me. I think I am getting my own little bit of countryside.

Great oaks from little acorns grow. I can confirm that. Dd planted an acorn to try and grow a bonsai oak when she was young. It got left out in the garden while we went on holiday.
Said oak is now about14ft high? The jays love it. Bonsai it ain't!

I have one single violet, too. Last year, I had lots, but can't see any more coming up yet.

I also had a visit from a rat an hour ago - it was eating up dropped seeds from the bird table. I shooed it quickly and I'll swear it swaggered as it walked off - cheek!

I saw a glossy brown rat with bright button eyes in my garden last year. It was a gorgeous animal. This one was a scruffy grey-brown - don't know if they are different, or the same type - does anyone know much about wild rats?

Whatsup & Carol - Wild violets in grass are beautiful, aren't they! How lovely.

carol, both rats were probably of the same species but one was a hearty young thing and the other a great-great-great-great-grandma.

I have been gathering dead dried stems of Red Campion from my garden and bundling them up. They make excellent fire-lighters.

No violet flowers yet but the leaves are looking good.

Well I may not have frogspawn but I do have violets. The early scented kind which are the best. The later dog violets are pretty but no scent. (dog as in common or not so great? dog days, dog wood, dog tired, dog rough, dog daisies, bitofadog etc)
Got down on my knees on the gravel path and stuck my nose to them for that magical parma violet smell yesterday. Unlike all others.
Still peering pensively into the pond, both mine and the one across the way where I found spawn last year. I noticed on Saturday in Cambridgeshire that spring is a little more advanced there, so I am still living in hopes.

Snowdrops, violets, freesia - simple and yet stunning

I have a bunch off daffs in my lounge and my eye keeps straying to their lovely yellow cheerfulness!

Jeni .

We have got a fir tree that was a little three foot-ish indoor Xmas tree when we planted it out back in the early seventies. It must now be about 35 ft high, and it's really beautiful on a sunny, blue sky day (like today). When you look up at it (it's on a bank) you can see it is absolutely laden with long, smooth, light brown fir cones.

Sometimes I look up at it and think, "Once, our Christmas fairy was on top of that!"

Dog tired yet, JessM? I have a plethora of violets and today I found that the pulmonaria was coming out. Masses of hellebores too.

Lovely to see the blues as well as the yellows isn't it *annobel"