Greening up

Winter honeysuckle

March has been on the cool side, often turning chilly towards evening, though there have been no real frosts for a couple of weeks now; we’re still waiting for any proper warmth, but the natural world has suddenly decided that it is spring, as if it had just been waiting for the equinox.  Over the course of a very few days I noticed that some of the deciduous shrubs had put out their new leaves.  One of the earliest shrubs to leaf up is always the winter honeysuckle; it has flowered well this winter, pumping out scent and attracting the early bees, but now the flowers are being superseded by the bright green leaves.  Like so many of the shrubs in the garden, it has outgrown its allotted space, developed much old wood and layered itself; if I can find the time, I need to get in there with the saw and garden fork to sort it out.

Other plants that have started to green up include the gooseberries – bare and brown one day, and almost the next, bright green – followed quickly by the other soft fruit.

I’ve been doing some manual ‘greening up’, of the lawn near the greenhouse.  It has had a few bare patches for a while now, the result of my intermittent attempts to weed out some of the creeping potentilla, an innocuous-looking little plant which has a tap-root up to 30cm/1ft deep and throws out long runners through the grass and into the flower beds, if allowed.  My attempts to curb its enthusiasm aren’t having much success (and are leaving their mark on the lawn).  Then last year we had to have the drains relaid, and the lawn still bears the considerable scars from the work.  Next week we’re having some hard landscaping done, including a small area of hardstanding next to the summerhouse; as it happens, that area, currently part of the lawn, has some of the most weed-free grass in the garden, and it seems a pity to have it dug up and carted away by the workmen.  I’ve been lifting turves from there and trying to bed them into the bare patches by the greenhouse.  There’s still a short stretch needing to be done – I’ll have to find some more decent-quality lawn elsewhere! – and I suspect that the newly laid area is going to be rather lumpy and uneven for a while, but it does look a little better than it did.

The other predominant colour in the garden at the moment is yellow – the daffodils are at their peak, and the doronicums are starting to bloom.  I’m still waiting for the little daffs in the window-box to flower, though the ‘Blue Pearl’ crocuses are doing a good job of brightening up the window.  And yesterday I was stopped in my tracks half-way across the garden when I caught the scent of violets on the breeze; the sprawling and untidy patch of violets in the bottom border is in bloom.  It’s amazing how such a tiny flower can pack such an olfactory punch.  A small posy is now on the table indoors.

'Blue Pearl' crocuses in the windowbox

A posy of violets

The birds are also moving into full spring mode.  The sparrows and robins are collecting nest material and taking it into the long hedge, where the blackbirds already have a thriving nest; Mr Blackbird has been gathering little worms and grubs to feed their first nestlings (he particularly appreciated my lawn-digging).  One, and possibly two, coal tits have been about; we occasionally see one on the seed feeder, further down the garden, but this one has discovered the fatball container and has been coming to the patio to bathe.  I hope they’re nesting nearby.

And on our weekly shopping trip yesterday we saw blackthorn flowering in the hedges, and the first lambs in the fields.  The weather is forecast to be on the chilly side for a while yet – the proverbial ‘blackthorn winter’ – but spring is definitely coming!