Ok, on a scale of 1 to 10, how fed up are you with the spring so far? I know we Brits like talking about the weather, but we deserve to talk about it when it is like this. I've yet to see a butterfly and only one bumblebee this year. At least many of you I believe have got sunshine today (not here - the leaden grey continues) so maybe you'll have the cheer of a bit of birdsong.
I like to bring you photos that I've taken very recently, and being a Bank Holiday today you get them minutes after they were taken. Today, in the insectless and birdsong-free world that is my garden this morning, and with the frogspawn and toadspawn sealed under a layer of ice in the pond, at least my 'woodland garden' looked somewhat springlike.
The Primroses are blooming in profusion...
and the Wood Spurge Euphorbia amygdaloides var robbiae is looking very fresh.
Even if insects were about, all that tends to visit the spurge in my garden tends to be ants, but it provides some early ground cover, and the robbiae variety is a fast spreader but easy to control, so I'm happy to include it.
And then the one good thing about the relentless cold weather is that the flowering bulbs such as the Wild Daffodils just keep going on and on and on, as if in suspended animation
One senses that when warmer weather arrives, spring is going to go off with a bang, a helter-skelter flurry of activity. But for now we - and wildlife - just wait in tense anticipation...
On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m hovering around 15. On the plus side, my woodland garden is a picture at the moment, it is full of spring colour and being sheltered by a high hedge it is not as bitingly cold as the rest of the garden.
With the weather being slightly warmer down here there are lots of insects about. Yesterday I was watching two warblers catching insects around the pond, they haven’t visited the garden for a couple of years so this was a welcome sight.