callmemadam | Garden notes: Spring? (Reply)

Are we nearly there yet? In my book, if you’d rather be outdoors than in, it’s spring. After another frosty start it turned sunny here and was almost warm if you stayed in the sun and kept out of the stiff breeze. Last month the garden centre was selling pots of tulips and daffodils at half price to people with loyalty cards. I picked ‘Johann Strauss’ tulips and they've grown like mad. When the sun is on them, they open right out, looking like little suns inside.

I planted lots of miniature daffodils last September and they’re the first to flower. I think this one is ‘Jetfire’.

What happened to the seventy crocus bulbs I put in? I only saw about a dozen and the birds pecked the flowers to pieces. Those pesky deer have cropped all the heads off all the grape hyacinths, so no sea of blue this year. I’m not that keen on the plants, thinking them rather weedy, but I’d rather see them than a lot of stalks. Hellebores are in bloom. I saw a bumble bee right inside a flower of Helleborus niger, looking as though it were trying to clutch the entire clump of stamens to its chest.

My pansy basket, hung up last October, looked like nothing on earth after some severe weather and total neglect on my part. I took it into the greenhouse and was very fierce with the secateurs. Let’s see if it recovers. I found that the cuttings all needed watering, a sure sign of new growth. Pretty soon I must have a major potting session.

I love primroses so much that I don’t mind where they put themselves. Here they’ve popped up in the middle of a path.