Full Spring

After several weeks where the weather has been generally miserable -- at best leaden skies and wind, though not so bad as to stop me putting in a a few days of cycling to work -- and unexpected fire-fighting at work has been sapping my energies, today was, after a dull start, full of promise of summer. Let's hope it doesn't turn into one of those years where Q2 is put on back-to-front.

In the garden, the forsythia is finishing, the earliest tulips have finished, but the daffs, grape hyacinths and main tulips are in full flower; while the primroses carry on. And a fair number of new plants from last year failed to overwinter -- one of the lavenders, most of the geraniums, despite the latter being in a notionally frost-free greenhouse.

Still, the weather was mild enough weekend before last to take the surviving plants out, and fumigate the greenhouse; and I could then use the space to dry out the lawn weed-and-feed that had gotten damp in the shed over the winter. So the lawn dressing belatedly happened last weekend, a couple of weeks later than usual. And now the first of the orders of plants arrived, so there are tomatoes in pots, and chilis and overwintered perpetual spinach in the greenhouse; with salad leaves and basil planted as seeds.

Out in the rest of the garden, the bed for annuals has been dug, raked & weeded, so is ready for scattering seed, sunflowers are in a seed-tray, waiting to germinate, and the green bin full to the brim again, with over a week to the next collection -- showing how suddenly I have to make up for lost time (some years gardening started in mid-February, so I'm at least a month behind, plus having still to catch up from the abruptly truncated autumn).