DOUCEUR

Canadian Goldrich apricot in nearly full flower

Bracing myself for the usual sharp drop in temperature as I stepped out the back door this morning, it was a welcome change to be greeted by a calm and relatively warm morning. All signs are pointing to an early Spring and as several of my fruit trees are already donning their floral finery, I can only cross my fingers that the weather doesn't take a turn for the worse over the next few weeks.

New faces are popping up in different corners of the garden as the days warm and the daylight lengthens, but to be honest about half of my discoveries are still along the lines of 'they did what here?'

Despite the onrushing spring, however, there's only so much one person can do at a time, especially when an office job calls for several days in a week. It's a mixed blessing as on the one hand I'm impatient to see some serious progress, but on the other being forced to take it slow has allowed me to plan layouts more carefully, although I'm still a long way off a cohesive vision for the whole site. Some highlights from August so far...

These delicate lilac coloured flowers have been cropping up everywhere, I think it's a type of iris called blue-eyed grass

One of my own additions and an Australian native, I love everlasting flowers and these paper daisies also have a beautiful perfume.

A rough outline of what will be a herbal tea garden. Have started with some sage, pineapple sage, lemon verbena and chamomile.

A dwarf almond also getting into the Spring of things

A mystery fruit tree and a new bed dug in and planted last weekend for an early pea crop

Green-stalk rhubarb taken from a 10 year old plant from another gardener in the valley

One of my favourite cottage garden flowers, I'm happy to have found a few of them around

Foxgloves have run rampant throughout this garden. They are another one of my favourites so will be transplanting a lot of the runaway seedlings but I will need to keep a close watch on seed heads in the future to stop them spreading.