Suddenly it is mild, the frost has receded and the air has a moment of warmth in it. It feels like the season is stirring.
There are signs of spring all around the garden. The winter aconites (yes I know, they are a sign of winter, the clue is in the name), are now flowering well.
The Aconite Lawn, which is the side lawn at the front of the house, is now flowering well. I planted them into the lawn in 2014 and after a sulky couple of years they now return well. I fret every year wondering if they will re-emerge and from my experience aconites are expert hiders. They lurk under the ground, waiting, waiting and then pop! from nowhere there they are flowering away. Tricksy things aconites.
There are some other flowers in the front lawn, these tommasinianus crocii are already forming little clumpettes and this year I added some hooped daffodils. I used to not understand hooped daffodils, I thought them just plain weird and not like those daffodils I grew up knowing. As my gardening knowledge grows so does my appreciation of different plants. Now these little beauties are much loved and I just want more and more.
Daffodils are an important sign of spring in my garden. These are Narcissus February Gold, a beautifully formed flower with a slight uplift in the petals. It is a good yellow and I like a good yellow.
I also like a good blue. These anenome blanda are always early to flower and always praised by me for doing so. They are such a good deep colour, there is nothing bland about them at all.
Whereas these Pulmonaria are wishy-washy. They cannot pretend they are not, yet in my contrary ways I still like them. They pop up here and there in the garden and they are forgiven much as they flower early.
Flowering early matters as the big bees are around. I get a lot of bumble bees in the garden this time of year and the winter honeysuckle is a major draw for them. The flowers are loaded with pollen and easy for these huge aerodynamically-challenged insects to hang on to them and feed.
I love these early flowers and I am grateful for these mild days. I hope it is not an interlude before the Beast from the East decides to return. It was around this time last year we had lots of heavy snow; so I watch the forecasts obsessively and hopefully and whisper to the garden to not go too fast too soon. I long for the spring, but I can wait a little longer.... just a little.
