And this year's winner is: "Mary Queen of Scots", whose first flowers opened last weekend. She's usually the first rose to get going. Other late spring flowers are coming along: the lily of the valley is mostly past now, the wisteria just starting, the aquilegias on the point of coming out. The first Welsh poppy flowered yesterday. The path alongside the hedge is looking bright, with the last of the doronicums, the honesty and the pulmonaria all in flower, with the smilacina (I think that's what it is) just coming out too. (I've been looking for a replacement for the pulmonaria, a rather wishy-washy and far too rampant thing which I tolerate because it's good ground cover; a nice blue one has self-seeded alongside the garage and I've managed to pot it up. Now to rip out some of the boring one to make room for it!)
The little orange species tulips at the bottom of the garden - I can never remember their proper name - are up and quite prolific this year. Must plant more tulips for next year. The ones in pots haven't done too well this year; "Tres Chic" was indeed chic but only three blooms came out (the rest killed by the cold?). I did like "Sherwood Gardens", a sturdy but graceful tulip with a nice oval shape and a colour just the lilac side of pink.
Some of the best colour combinations are the accidental ones. The pale orange geum with the dark-leaved bugle is a good, if unplanned, pairing; it would look good with "Queen of Night" tulips, I think. On the other hand, I'm wondering if the new peach-coloured chaenomeles is going to look good with the honeysuckle (which has bounced back amazingly after I butchered it earlier this year). The good news down there is that the clematis (a white viticella) is now sprouting; I hope there's something for it to climb on as I don't want to have to disentangle it from the honeysuckle!
Everything seems to be growing well in spite of the miserable weather. It has continued cold, with temperatures rarely getting far into double figures and all too often in single figures. Last weekend was warmer - a quick lunch outside, though you wouldn't want to linger too long out of the sun - but windy, and today has finished misty and damp - more November than May. The forecast is for this to last the rest of the month. It's bad for butterflies, apparently, and certainly I haven't seen many: an orange-tip last week, and a peacock and a little blue butterfly last weekend, though it's still early up here in the hills for them.
The swallows are here, and the house martins too; no swifts seen yet, though a group of them went screaming overhead in Cirencester last weekend. The baby blackbirds have scattered, although at least one of them succumbed (a window strike, we think). The littlest one hung around until the middle of this week, when it disappeared; I hope it just decided to move on, though it was still quite immature and I'm not hopeful. The sparrows and starlings are taking food into their nests in the various parts of the roof, but no fledgelings have appeared yet. The thrushes and greenfinches are still about, also dunnocks; and we think we've seen blue tits going to and from the nestbox at the bottom of the garden. The two partridges are still around a lot and getting fairly trusting, but the pheasant has been about very little; I assume he's now off doing whatever it is he does in summer.
The most interesting bird sightings have been little and large. A very small, acrobatic bird with a sharp pointed beak was hanging around the ash tree on the drive last weekend; I could only see a silhouette, but it looked very much like a goldcrest. And the weekend before last we had a visit from the red kite (the same one we saw in February?) over the field behind us - quite an impressive sighting!
Meanwhile, down in the cellar, the mouse has been dealt with. Not by the humane trap - which failed completely (though it is a very small trap and quite a large mouse so maybe it simply couldn't get in). In the end we just opened the outside door through which it originally came in - and it went out. Simple really.
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