The weather doesn’t know what to do today, one minute it’s glorious sunshine with blue skies and fluffy clouds, the next minute it’s raining, I think I even heard thunder this afternoon! It’s been a bit mixed for the last couple of weeks, we’ve had warm sunny days, hail, sleet, rain…all in the same day! The poor plants don’t know whether their coming or going.

The late frosts have damaged quite a few new shoots, one of my acer’s has been quite badly frosted so I’ll leave it a while and see what recovers. A few roses have also got droopy looking shoots too. My other acer is down in the lower garden amongst all the other pots, it seems quite protected down there, I think having a collection of plants there has made almost a micro climate.

This morning I’ve been weeding, after all the rain and the warmth the perennial weeds are starting to push their heads up, in particular mares tail and bindweed. There’s lots of hairy bittercress too, the chickens used to love eating that. I started off working my way round the patio. The camassia there look stunning, the white broom is just starting to come into flower too.

There’s a little bunch of daffodils by the arch and despite all the weather we’ve had, I’m sure they’ve been flowering for several weeks!

I’ve got several clumps of camassia scattered round the garden, this one is in the Amber & Amethyst garden (AKA the beer garden!)

I’m trying to sort out the old compost heap too, so I’ve dug up lots of nettle roots and more bindweed. It’s beautiful compost up there, so once I’ve got all the weeds out I’ll mulch it round the back garden. There’s a big pile of wood to be sorted up there too. In the corner there is a flowering cherry, you can just see it in the photo below of what my OH calls the beer garden!! I planted it a few years ago, at the moment it seems to be growing upwards rather than out, but I’m sure it will fill out in time. I’m hoping in time it will be quite spectacular, it has bronze foliage and good autumn colour too so a real all season interest tree.

The lilac behind the summerhouse is just coming into flower too, it’s pretty old is this one, they’re not particularly long lived trees, we used to have about four at the side of the drive which the previous owner had planted, one day something made me push against one…and it fell down!! So I pushed against the others and they all fell down! I keep testing this one every so often, I’d rather it fell in a controlled manner rather than suddenly going! They will often sprout again from the base. You can also see in the photo how much the trees behind us are greening up, everything looks so fresh and verdant at this time of year.

A couple of years ago I planted a rhododendron which I’d bought at the Harrogate Spring Flower Show. It’s just a common pink one but it’s looking gorgeous, once it gets bigger it’s going to look great against the tall fence.

I think we need a concerted effort to ‘tidy up’ the garden, there seems to be various lengths of wood or breeze blocks, empty plant pots …you get the picture! I’ve started trying to bring something down every time I go in the garden, hopefully I’ll get there in time!