A glimmer of early spring! Colour in the garden

We have an aconite - yes, a whole one! They do seem to move about from year to year and so we keep digging them up by mistake, so it's amazing that we have even one. The snowdrops are doing well and we have flowers on the witch hazel, which we foolishly planted where we can't see it from the house, and it's far too cold to go out and admire it a lot just now. The are buds on one of the hellebores too, so there is hope. North-East of Scotland.

Lots of aconites in bloom here in East Yorkshire and the first of the snowdrops are coming into flower.

I brought some tall monkshood blue and yellow aconite here from our uk garden- only to find they grow in the wild here (one of the most poisonous plants on earth- but never a problem with our free range chickens).

Just put a photo of our garden fence - covered in magical snow drifts!
It will be a long time until our millions of snow drops (galanthus) wild blue and white crocuses, and other spring bulbs will be out, I fear ;)

Willow and hazel catkins have been around for a few weeks in neighbouring gardens and I think my tree allergies have now arrived on top of sinusitis and flu. Can't win. Another sign of spring is that the collar doves are behaving in a disgracefully flirtatious manner!

Ouch, that sounds really horrible anno- hope the flu and sinusitis go soon, and that your meds will deal with the allergies- poor you.

I am so lucky I've never suffered from allergies- although I do often hve sinus problems. I massage under the cheek bones in a circular motion several times a day, and also the corners of the eyes at the tope of the nose- and it does seem to help a bit.

I love monkshoods but the slugs/snails seem to thrive on demolishing them, unfortunately with no ill effects ......along with my lupins and delphiniums. Using slug pellets is only way of ensuring that some plants survive.
Why don't slugs and snails eat weeds?!

I am surprised, as they do not touch mine. I have 2 types of blue, one that flowers early Summer and one in autumn, and 1 yellow- surely if it can kill a dog (in french it is called aconite tue-chien) it should kill slugs and snails!

The very vivd blue and the lovely 'monkshood' shape of the flowers is even better than delphinium- I'll always remember the first time I came across a wild one near here when on holiday visiting my parents.

Another plant I adored I brought over from our uk garden was thalictrum- tiny little purple balls that then open to the loveliest little plumes of soft pink. And then I discovered they grow wild all over here- just could not believe my eyes!