Tulip time

 

Tulip 'Exotic Emperor'

As the daffodils fade, it’s the turn of the tulips to take centre stage.  One of my favourite flowers: lovely colours, often a lovely shape, with a glowing sheen on the petals and a habit of fading gracefully, like old silk.  Not that there are too many in the garden this year; I deliberately only bought five varieties last winter, which I couldn’t plant out (in pots) until February because of the freezing weather earlier in the winter.  Unsurprisingly, they’re coming up late and in so-so condition.  The ‘Exotic Emperor’s, an early variety, are just coming into bloom, whereas a long-standing clump of dark red tulips, which I think are ‘Couleur Cardinal’, planted down the far end of the vegetable patch, has been flowering for a couple of weeks.  Some of them are in a vase indoors, but there are still some uncut.  (There’s also a paler tulip in that group, and I don’t know what it is - 'Angelique'?) 

Tulip 'Couleur Cardinal' - and one interloper!

The first tulips in flower were the little red ones in the (overgrown) shady border by the summerhouse.  There are also some pale orange species tulips in that bed, but they flower much later.  Nearby, in the bottom bed, there are a few ‘Menton’ in bud, and a single dark purple ‘Havran’, the last survivor of a previous planting.  Another singleton is ‘Sweetheart’ in the front garden; all the others have disappeared, which is a pity as it’s a pretty tulip. 

Early red tulips

A solitary Tulip 'Havran'

The ’bottom of the veg patch’ tulips are being encroached on by the lily of the valley, which has spread in under the wall from next door’s garden.  It too is nearly in flower; we don’t usually manage flowers to pick in time for May Day, though I can normally make a posy of them not long after.  This spring’s miserable temperatures (today is typical, cold and wet) don’t seem to have dampened their spirits too much; there are buds already.

Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis)

There was one good gardening day this week, almost (but not quite) mild enough to work outside without a jacket, and I got some weeding in the vegetable beds done.  The robin – or more than one, I’m never sure how many we have in the garden! – was very interested, coming up close on more than one occasion to look for worms and grubs.  This one seems to have a nest in the ivy by the rowan tree, where he (or she) keeps taking food.  There is a pecking order, however, and a blackbird pair seem higher up in it than the robin; they too were foraging around when I was out of the way, and the robin had to hang back until they were finished.  (Perhaps that was encouraging the robin to come close to me while I was working, as the blackbirds are not as trusting and he could get first pickings that way.)  The blackbirds – they seem to be a different pair to the patio blackbirds, with territory on the other side of the garden – must have started their nesting very early, as today they were being followed by two quite well-grown youngsters looking for food.  The patio blackbird, meanwhile, has been singing from the top of the neighbours’ roof, in competition with the song thrush, who sings from the top of the hawthorn tree!  It’s all go round here.

Other birdlife has included a pair of bullfinches, nibbling at the plum tree shoots, and a warbler.  The two partridges are still intermittently about in the garden; I try not to disturb them, though they’re fairly tolerant of my presence (at a respectful distance). 

Tulip time coincides with dandelion time; one of my daily jobs at the moment is to go round the garden trying to weed out as many dandelions as I can see before they seed.  They have considerable wildlife value, attracting hoverflies, but I have no compunction about removing them from the garden as there are hundreds, if not thousands, in the roadside verges and fields round here.  While digging one out from the edges of the shady summerhouse border, I disturbed two little fieldmice, which scooted away into the undergrowth from their hiding-place.  The most notable visitor to the garden this week, however, was a large dog fox which wandered across the patio and off down the garden one day at breakfast time.  Probably the same one as raided a neighbour’s chickens later in the week.