Just curious

The weather is still chilly - particularly the last couple of days - and very windy.  The greenhouse heater is back on and the door mostly firmly closed.  Before the cold snap, however, I was happily leaving the door open, and one day I stepped inside and found our handsome local cock pheasant standing on the staging.  I'm not sure which of us got the bigger shock.  He was certainly taken aback, and tried to fly at the windows, shredding the already fragile bubblewrap and scattering its fixings.  I went back indoors to leave his exit route clear, but after a few minutes he was obviously still in there; it was only when I approached from the back of the greenhouse to flush him towards the door that he jumped down and ran off.  Apart from the bubblewrap he didn't seem to have done any damage (or made any mess), although he had been standing on a tray of seedlings (which recovered).  He had wandered past the greenhouse a few times while I was in there, and seemed interested in it; I think he was just curious, but I hope his curiosity has been satisfied for the time being.  He has been giving me a wider than usual berth since.

The seedlings - old seeds of brussels sprouts and lettuce, sown last autumn in the hope of getting a few baby salad leaves from anything that germinated - have done rather better than I expected, and I've since potted up a few of them to grow on.  The aubergine and chilli seedlings have also been potted on, and the tomatoes sown; all of these are still indoors as it's warmer there.  The first tomatoes have germinated - good old 'Gardener's Delight', from a packet of seeds that's now about four years old, beating the newly opened packets of other varieties!  Various brassica seeds have also been sown in trays in the greenhouse.  I must get on with sowing the flowers.

Freesia from the greenhouse

Another 'better than expected' in the greenhouse are the freesias.  They were planted in pots last year but did very little, and I put the pots outside and rather forgot about them.  In the autumn I noticed that the leaves were coming up, so I decided to give them another chance and kept them over winter in the greenhouse; the first flowers have now been cut for the house.

Outdoors, the daffodils are in full swing and a few tulip buds are showing.  Newly opened flowers include the Anemone blanda at the bottom of the garden, the Bergenia 'Bressingham White' in the front garden (a little aggressively white beside Narcissus 'Jenny' (ivory with pale lemon cup) so I may move it later in the year), Epimedium sulphureum and the first of the doronicums.  The cowslips in the lawn are starting to open, as is one of the osmanthuses (the other has been cut back rather hard so may not do much this year).  The hellebores are still looking good (the photo is of a big one that is rather out of sight and out of mind most of the time, being a self-seeded plant almost under the long hedge, but it's a good do-er), and the winter-flowering shrubs are still in bloom, despite the bullfinches' fondness for the winter honeysuckle shoots.  The cold weather - including some hail and sleet - doesn't seem to have held the plants back, and the next few days are to bring more sunshine, so I'm hoping for even more colour in the garden soon!

A host of golden daffs

First cowslips

Anemone blanda

Hellebore in full flower

Epimedium sulphureum