Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of our move to these parts: it was also a Friday 13^th, and as nobody else seemed to want to move that day, we had the key to the house by shortly after 10:00 am, which is some kind of record, I understand.  Five years have made something of a mark on the garden: there was nothing like the colour then compared with now: in flower now we have primroses (from sometime fellow Thursday artist Gladys), polyanthus and spiraea from the old house, and all sorts of stuff grown from seed, like wallflowers, aubrieta and alyssum saxatile.  As for the bulbs, the daffodils are moving into the hay stage, but we still have fritillaries in flower, and the tulips are doing well in their pots – we missed them last year: they came and went while we were in France at Easter.  The magnolia is flowering like mad – when we came here, it was smothered by the leylandii that we had cut down early in our tenancy.  The hydrangeas are starting into strong growth: I’ve dead-headed the one that keeps its flower heads through the winter now that the worst of the frosts are behind us (famous last words) and the new growth is established.  The climbing one on the back fence is growing away strongly, next to an ornamental cherry that is going to flower this year for only the second time since we’ve been here.  (Though maybe it too comes and goes while we’re on our Easter trip south!)  The kitchen window ledge is littered with seed trays.  I started a lot of seed on Monday, and the cosmos have germinated well.  The only other sign of life is from one of the rudbeckia trays, but it’s early days yet!  The roses are mostly starting into vigorous life.  The most recently planted ones are a bit shy, and a couple of miserable specimens at the front look as if they may have turned their toes up.  If so, no great loss.  And I’m looking forward as ever to the iris sibirica, of which we now have several clumps round the garden.  I’m pretty sure that they and most of the polyanthus are descended from plants that grew in my parents’ garden in Scotland.

The birds are busy and noisy: our mallards have been back at intervals, and the tray we feed them from is also attracting chaffinches, blackbirds, collar doves, robins and dunnocks, but also the usual voracious suspects: squirrels and wood pigeons.

On Wednesday we were at the wedding of Martyn’s niece, Nina, now Mrs Steven Smith.  It is a second marriage for both of them, and the wedding was a fairly small gathering.  The day was pleasant and nicely under-stated. 

And Friday 13^th this year was the day my cold started ratcheting up the Beaufort scale, or whatever the equivalent is.  Nuisance.