It’s spring!

It’s that welcome time of year that seems to take for ever to arrive.  There’s light in the sky well before 6.00am, and the garden is coming back to life at last.  In the front garden, the magnolia stellata and camellia are coming into flower (photographs can wait until there are a few more blooms), and at the back all sorts of things are delighting us.  The polyanthus are starting to give us a good display, and the beautiful hoop petticoat narcissi are in flower.  Tulips are budding in various containers, and there are good shoots on the roses.  We went plant buying on Monday, spending the Christmas present vouchers.

Today I’ve got into my wellies for the first time in years and planted up the  new bed at the top of the garden.  A pink camellia, two climbing roses, two clematiseseses, a fuji cherry and a perennial rudbeckia (it came to us last year labelled ‘aubergine’... ) are now all planted out.  We have rooted  cuttings of two varieties of cistus and a hebe to add to the border when I can summon the energy.  But even then there’s still going to be a lot of bare earth.  Might split the primroses when they go over, and slap in a few bits of lungwort.  There’s also some woodland geranium that can split to add ground cover.

Meanwhile, in the sitooterie, seeds are germinating like mad.  The latest to germinate are tagetes, rosemary and tarragon.  The fuchsia cuttings seem OK for the moment, but I’m not counting my fuchsias before they’re rooted.  Thinking we might put some of them with trailing geraniums in the basket at the front door this year, to make a change from the ivy and lobelia we’ve had of late.

My esteemed ex-employer is making its presence felt.  We’ve had the usual two vans outside twice in the past week.  No idea what they’re doing, but as usual it’s one man working and two watching for much of the time.  It’s the sub-contractors today, speaking a language I don’t recognise.  We have finally weakened and bought the adaptors that will allow us to use the BT TV box.  And of course we’re having to pay an extra £12 a month to get any useful content.  Still, it seems to be working, despite - or, let’s be generous, perhaps because of - the fiddling around down the holes in the street.