Not gardening weather

It has not been gardening weather, not very much anyway.  We didn't get the threatened snow, and the cold snap was actually quite short, but the temperatures haven't risen much and it has been rather wet, and this week has, frankly, been more like November than April - cloud down to ground level, chill and no sun.  Apart from a little seed-sowing, indoors and out, some work digging out and re-siting crocosmia corms (that is some tough plant - still a lot of it left) and a little weeding, garden activities have been limited to opening and closing the cold frame and hardening off some of the plants in the greenhouse.  It's about time that they had a sense of the hard world outside.  There's actually nothing in the cold frame that needs shelter now; much of what is in there only wanted protection from slugs and other nasties, and even the sweet peas can put up with the current temperatures (although they will benefit from something a little warmer).  We are promised rising temperatures next week, and about time too.

Despite that, there continue to be signs that spring is on its way.  The pyramidal orchids are showing leaves in the lawn and, like the early spotteds mentioned last time, have been marked off to protect them from mowing (not that we've started that yet - too damp).  Most of the big daffodils are out, even the ones I planted surreptitiously in the verge across the road, and there are buds on some of the early tulips.  The cold weather last month has affected some of the pot plantings, with quite a lot of scorched leaves.  The fern in the pot with Carex 'Evergold' is looking particularly brown; I expect it will regrow, but at the moment it is not a happy bunny.  The tub with the little species tulips (which I had dug up from the bottom of the garden where I'm clearing the weeds) has been raided by the mouse, judging by the size of the holes in the compost and the chewed remains of bulbs alongside, and lots of netting has been placed on top; fortunately I see that I failed to dig all of them out from their original position, so all is not lost.  The new puschkinia bulbs, planted last autumn in small pots on the patio, are doing nicely; a very pretty pale blue that goes well with little daffodil 'Elka'.  Scilla siberica 'Spring Beauty', a very dark blue, is also nice but not all the bulbs seem to have come up (perhaps, despite its Siberian origins, the cold weather was too much for it?).

Scilla siberica 'Spring Beauty'

Puschkinia libanotica

Narcissus 'Elka'

A pair of blue tits have been flying in and out of the nestbox, presumably fitting it out to their taste.  There should be plenty of food for their youngsters by the time they hatch, as there has already been a noticeable increase in insect life in the garden, particularly on the few sunny days that we've had.  I'm glad the tits don't seem to have been put off by the protective wire netting loosely positioned around the nestbox (with tit-sized holes left open) to keep the woodpecker off.  Woodie has made a couple of visits to the fatballs, but never for long.  The long-tailed tits continue to come regularly, usually as a pair, a few times with some of their relatives, and one day during the cold weather they brought all their friends - there were 10 of them.  There are also quite a lot of hedgehoggy-looking droppings on the lawn - spring is slowly coming to the garden!