I’m back from our holiday just in time for the Friday Photo Challenge organised by Postcard from Gibralter. This weeks theme is Spring…and we’ve got snow forecast again this weekend!! The meme I posted a few weeks ago comes to mind!

Having been away for most of March I was concerned I would return to a garden already galloping away from me as this is when the garden usually starts to galvanize it’s self and everything shoots up. One advantage of all the snow the UK has had recently (to us as we enjoyed the 30′ heat of Bali!!) is that it has delayed the start of spring. I think any plant that was starting to stick it’s head above soil level has changed it’s mind. The garden is pretty much as I left it at the end of February.

We’ve had the Beast from the East and then the Pest from the West, I haven’t seen snow like this for many years. When we left to go on holiday we had about 8″ in the garden, in fact we could easily have missed our flight, despite booking a hotel near the airport for the night before. We left early about 3pm for the drive across the Pennines to Manchester that usually takes about 90 minutes tops. We finally arrived after 7pm, four hours later and heard on the news that the M62 motorway had been shut due to conditions and accidents just after we got through and people were stranded in their cars for the night up there!!

Hopefully spring will start to arrive soon, in the meantime these photos are from last year in our garden…

Our magnolia stellata is one of my favourite spring trees, it’s still in tight bud so it will be another few weeks before it looks like this. The daffodils beneath them have a lovely strong scent which fills the air on a warm spring day.

Primroses are a lovely herald to spring, this little clump is at the top of the garden next to the path so they cheer us up as we go to walk the dogs up the back lane.These are candelabra primulas with a round head of flowers on top of a tall stem, I’m trying to get a few more of these around the pond as I think they are really pretty. The pond area always looks good in the spring as the hostas and the irises leaf up pretty early on and there’s lots of spring flowers interplanting them.

Forget-me-nots, Solomon’s seal, hellebore, aquilegias, wall flowers and a little dicenta, all things to look forward to in the next few weeks 🙂