Absolutely no excuse

There's absolutely no excuse for not getting on with the gardening jobs now.  We are instructed to stay at home for at least three weeks, and the sun has been shining; most people in the village are either working in their gardens or taking some exercise walking round the lanes.  And the clocks go forward this weekend, giving an extra hour to work in the afternoon.  The sun has not exactly been warm, but it was very welcome and it dispersed the early morning frost; I've been opening the greenhouse vents during the day to stop it getting too warm in there.  It'll soon be time to take down the bubblewrap, but not until the night frosts ease up; this morning is cloudy and breezy, and the next couple of days are going to be much colder and windier.  The rising temperatures in the last week or so, however, have brought out more bees, wasps and hoverflies, and the first two butterflies: a peacock and a comma.

Soon, ideally this weekend, we'll make the first cut of the lawn, which is looking decidedly shaggy after the mild winter.  The orchids have been marked off to protect them, and the cowslips are starting to show too.  In preparation I've dug out the old grass clippings pile, which had at least two years' worth, and probably more, of rotted clippings in it; the old rotted stuff has been spread under the hazels and under some of the apple cordons, to improve the soil and to mulch out some of the weeds (mostly speedwell and lesser celandine).  If I can find compost to spare, in due course I might spread some on top of the hazels bed and plant out salad crops in there.  The robin was very enthusiastic about my work, but two toads probably took a rather dimmer view of my disturbing their nice damp hiding place in the old clippings pile.  I tidied up the honeysuckle and clematis down in that corner of the garden as well, and it's now looking rather tidier.

Doronicum caucasicum

The daffodils are mostly all out, except for the late scented ones; the mixed small daffs continue to do very well, but the 'Elka' have only produced eight flowers in all and probably need feeding.  I need to find a place for, and plant, more of the late scented narcissi; the few I had seem to have pretty much all disappeared.  The doronicums are also out; it's a pity that they're daffodil-yellow, as they disappear visually into the general mix.  Epimedium sulphureum is also yellow, but a paler shade of primrose and, being a shade-lover, it's well away from the daffs.  In late winter I cut off all the leaves and gave the plant a frost-protecting mulch of dry wisteria leaves; the flowers are coming through this and making a rather fine show.

Epimedium sulphureum

I'm also quite pleased with the windowbox; it looked a bit meh for much of the winter, despite the varied foliage colour, but the crocuses and little daffodils are out and it now looks rather better.  For later in spring, I have a six-pack of little violas - an impulse buy at the garden centre when I went to stock up on bird seed - which cost all of £1.50 and look like a bargain at that price.

Much is being made in the press about panic-buying of toilet rolls; when I went shopping just before everything locked down, what I had trouble finding was potting compost (my favourite brand from my preferred supplier was sold out - "it's been manic" said the sales guy) and bird seed.  I got the seed from elsewhere, and am just hoping that I can get by with my current stock of compost until I'm able to replenish it.  Propagation has to go ahead, however; the aubergines have been potted on into larger pots, and the tomato seedlings (sown in half-toilet roll inners) potted into 3in pots.  All are now on the landing window-sill.  In the greenhouse I need to make space for all the seed-sowing and potting up of dahlia tubers which will occupy me in the next couple of weeks.

Mixed hellebores

There are plenty of other jobs to be getting on with as well.  At the side of the house, a clump of self-sown hellebores contains a nice white plant, and later in the year I'd like to isolate that and put it in a better spot.  In the meantime I need to mark it in some way so that I dig up the correct bit!

In like a lion

Crocuses in the sun

"In like a lion and out like a lamb" is the old saying about March, and we've certainly had the lion weather this month.  There hasn't been as much very heavy rain as earlier in the year, though there have been some sharp hail showers, but it has been blustery for much of the time.  It does look as though the weather might be more benign from next week, however, so perhaps the second part of the adage might also be true this year.  Not that there haven't been some pleasant spring days; now and again we've had a day of sun, one of those days when the sun is bright and warm enough to remind you that spring is on its way, until you step into the shade, or the wind picks up, and you realise that it's not spring quite yet.

One day early in the month I even managed lunch outdoors (admittedly wearing full winter gardening clothes); I took a magazine to read, but in the end just sat and looked, and pondered, and planned.  A good opportunity to take stock of things, and to enjoy the garden in the sunshine.

There will be plenty more opportunities to give thought to the garden in the coming weeks, as we are all encouraged to shut ourselves away from the virus-ridden world.  No excuse not to get on with all those garden jobs when we can’t go anywhere else!

Over the past couple of weeks the garden’s insect life has been waking up.  There have been a couple of bees, a few hoverflies at the pulmonarias, a ladybird and a cloud of tiny flies over the lawn.  And last evening there was a bat feeding near the house, surely a sign that flying insects were about.  As for the birds, a blackbird has been carrying off beakfuls of moss, while her mate sings lustily from next-door’s roof; a thrush has been singing somewhere nearby, and a tawny owl calling from the trees across the road.  A pair of blue tits have checked out the nestbox (now protected with its outer layer of chicken netting, to keep the woodpeckers away), although a great tit was showing interest in it today.  A wren has been examining crevices in the dry-stone wall behind the veg plot, either for spiders to eat or places to nest, and the bottom-of-the-garden robin appears to have a mate.  There are also signs that our elderly, disabled pigeon Lefty may have found a new partner; he was sitting on the electricity wires by the holly tree, a favourite perch of his, with another pigeon one morning – there’s life in the old bird yet.

Pulmonaria by the wall

Ladybird out and about

The weather, and other commitments, have prevented me from getting much done in the garden.  The big apple tree has had a rough prune; there are more shoots that ought to be cut out, but I’ve already taken quite a lot off the canopy and don’t want to take more (20% is the limit) in case that prompts it to send up even more water-shoots.  I may let it be for this year, and take out one or two larger branches next year instead.  The buddleja is partly pruned - it’s always a lengthy job - and I have made a belated start on cutting back the big hazel clumps to let more light through to the veg beds.  

Last weekend I cut back the dead stems of the Big Yellow Thing (aka bupthalmum) and the Phlox ‘White Admiral’; that part of the garden always looks so much fresher once the old stems have gone.  When I tugged at the old bits of phlox, large parts of the rootstock came up; the clump was rotten in the centre, and actually I was delighted.  I’ve tried to dig that phlox up, without success, having pretty much fallen out of love with it, so this was an excellent opportunity to remove as much as possible.  The problem is that it’s too close to the Viburnum davidii, which, properly pruned (and not butchered as usually happens in supermarket car parks and the like), is a graceful, spreading small shrub that really needs a bit of space around it to show off its elegance, not to have a pushy phlox elbowing it in the ribs.  The phlox, when in flower, is the same height as the viburnum, so they do one another no favours so close – there’s no contrast.  And, although it’s white-flowered and so doesn’t clash with anything, it is aggressively white in a look-at-me sort of way.  Some of the clump remains, but at the far side of the old position; I’ll see how that looks in the summer, and remove the lot if I don’t like it.  I took a couple of pieces and potted them up, so I might put them elsewhere in the garden, or pass them on to the plant sale later in the year.

Primrose on the table

Also potted up were a few pieces of lily-of-the-valley, which is spreading under the apple cordons and into the veg patch paths; it really needs its enthusiasm curbing.  One piece is being forced in the greenhouse for early flowers (and it’s already in bud); the others are for donating to the plant sale.  Back in January I had dug up and potted a couple of bits of my Epimedium sulphureum, mostly for my own use elsewhere in the garden; they are nicely in flower (as is the clump in the garden), and they, and a pot of emerging pushkinias, have been put on the table outside the dining room window, joining a flowering primrose which was already in position there to provide some colour at close range.

The daffodils are mostly out – a welcome and cheerful splash of yellow – and some of the tulips are showing buds.

Indoors, the aubergine seedlings are flourishing, and tomatoes, peppers, chillies and some basil are germinating nicely; in the cold frame I have some lettuce seeds germinating.  It’s time to get seed-sowing properly underway, especially for edibles given that we might be glad of fresh food in the garden in a few months’ time if we’re still in lockdown!