Joys of Spring

A day of poems, presents and promises of life yet to come.
Thank you super and bagitha. Lovely both.

bagitha Sad news about your hens. We were left in charge of ducks belonging to friends. Two wayward stragglers, [investigating the neighbouring field] refused to return to their secure pen at bedtime. Next morning, we were confronted with heaps of down blowing across the field...not a welcome sight.

Today's daymark is that the sun slipped behind the brow of the hill immediately above our back kitchen window at 1615GMT. It has been lovely to see the sun's position these last two days!

Yes bagitha the sun is dipping over the island of Gigha. Wonderful sunsets are about to mesmerize us. Must have at least 100 in the sunset folder...all very different in colour and intensity.

Re the now non-existent chickens: DD said to DH (who hadn't noticed they were invisible yesterday ) this morning: You'll love the new garden decorations — meaning the strewn feathers. Gotta love the sense of humour!

bagitha - I wonder where she get's it from!

Tadpoles!

Just at last got frogspawn here in the chilly middle of England.

baggywas tadpoles the answer to where your dd got her soh from?

jeni. Knowing her, it could well be!

Spring equinox today and tomorrow is traditionally the First Day of Spring isn't it?

Actually, with regard to making obtuse statements, probably from her dad . I am a little more blunt.

DS2 born at the spring equinox. Must try to call tonight.

Bats!

Who is?

No-one around here! (Not 'arf!).

Ted Hughes: "Spring Nature Notes"

A spurt of daffodils, stiff, quivering -
Plumes, blades, creases, Guardsmen
At attention

Like sentinels at the tomb of a great queen.
(Not like what they are - the advance guard
Of a drunken slovenly army

Which will leave this whole place wrecked.)

In the shade of the north-west house face
It is twelve degrees C (rounded up),
But around my garden in many clumps
Are three hundred and fifty-five daffodils
And many more bunches of flowerless leaves
Feeding the bulbs of newborn narcissi
For flowering later this year or next.
I could not do hard work gardening today
So I counted sunshine flowers
And gathered dried stalks of Slender St John's Wort and dock
To bind into fire–lighting bundles.

Hughes feeling a bit grumpy that day?
My small daffy are lovely today, warm southerly wind blowing.

i love many of Ted Hughes's poems, but he was often a grumpy git.

But the millions of daffs on the roadsides will be dead for at least six weeks or more before they can be mowed. "which will leave this whole places wrecked"

I hate areas of dead (cultivated) daffs.....

in fact I only like tiny wild daffs in pale drifts......in wild places....dying gracefully among the grasses.

Down with mono-cultures of gaudy short-lived daffs I say

Mine are mainly wild Narcissus pseudonarcissus. If we weren't so tidy-minded, we wouldn't mind dead daffodil leaves on roadsides. We'd remember that while ever the leaves are green, they are feeding the bulbs for next year. Not to mention allowing the seed heads to mature and spread seed naturally.

I leave my daff leaves and seed heads to do their bit as untidily as they like. Result? – more every year with no interference from me.

Ted Hughes was a bit morbid, poor chap.

No wreckage in my garden! Just life being untidy.

As it is.

bagitha how do you find time to do any gardening at all, what with your habit of posting on every thread.......? Not trying to have a go, just curious.