Spring is on its way - hooray!

Last weekend was the first time in a while that I've ventured out into our garden. Part of my garden was forced as I knew I should be planting those tulips I'd discovered a few weeks back, and because from the house the greenhouse was calling me needing a water. As luck would have it Sunday was a relatively warm day so layered up I headed out with my phone in my hand. 

The other reason for taking a look around the garden was to see if Doris had played any of her havoc in our garden, as I'd spotted a neighbour's fence was down, both front and back. I was hoping that another neighbour's trampoline hadn't bounced into our garden, it hadn't. And thankfully Doris had left us alone, maybe she too, marvelled at my lone daffodil instead, and took pity on us!

It's a beautiful daffodil, but just a bit lonely I'd say.  I'm hoping there'll be a few more to come as I've plenty of shoots coming up, so I could be lucky.  Back near the house I found some of my own snowdrops nestling amongst the black grass. Every time I see a snowdrop I'm still amazed at how delicate they look, but how hardy they must be to be out there right now.

I spotted a dot of yellow at the back of the garden and soon afterwards snapped this, it's nibbled petals and textured leaves and if you look closely the promise of more flowers to come.  

And then I spotted my hellebores. I mean I've been seeing some pink from my seat at the table and hoped it was hellebores, and it was. We started with one plant a good few years ago and it's been self-seeding ever since, so now I have a row of these gorgeous plants spreading across the garden. 

One day I'll get brave and see if one of them fancies a change of scenery and try it in another part of the garden. With multiple plants that are self seeding it's easy to be brave like this. They seem such shy flowers with their heads downcast and their almost paper-like leaves. I was keen to photograph the inside of the flower as naturally as I could, but without looking a total loon and laying on the grass. Shoving my iPhone quite literally under their noses seemed to work.

Well for a bit, and then I decided to take a proper look. This flower is done and it's starting to set its seeds - see the bulbous bit in the middle - they'll burst and scatter their seeds when they're ready, and then hopefully next year I'll have a few more plants which I'll need to protect from MOH's over zealous weeding tendencies.

Ah hellebores, too pretty to be hidden away. But also a sure sign that Spring is on its way - hooray!

Whoops, tulips!

Relatively recently I remembered I'd bought some tulips. And quite quickly after that I remembered I hadn't planted them yet, and I was kind of late doing that. But in that moment, the thing I couldn't remember is where they were. 

Hmmnn.

This in itself was more troubling than not remembering to have planted the bulbs in the first place. I was pretty sure they would be ok, maybe sprouting a bit, not too much if I was lucky. I hoped that they were the same as seeds, in that they're programmed to grow, so will try their best for you, well, as long as you eventually give them some help. Help like soil, and water, that kind of thing.

My brain is one of those brains that usually knows where things are, even down to the exact location. For example I'll send MOH to get something from the spare freezer, he'll be rummaging (as usual) and I'll helpfully suggest, top shelf on the right, or wherever it is he's looking for, to much amazement from him (and sometimes me too). 

So it's a bit disconcerting when my brain can't retrieve that kind of information. Usually it'll pop back in at some point, so I leave it a while before starting The Search. 

And sure enough, after a little while of mulling, a day or so later, it came to me. There were in the conservatory, with my seeds. And when I checked, so they were. Thankfully they weren't sprouted so much that they'd grown through the bag either. Phew. 

I resolved to plant them as soon as I could, but that was easier said than done with a weekend in Norfolk planned and then another busy weekend with a long to do list, and one where the tulips didn't make it to the top of the list. But finally this weekend I planted them, and it was lovely to be out in the garden again. 

There was some maths involved too, I had ten of each of the following tulips:

• Weisse Berliner: a white flower, with up to four flowers per stem
• Flaming Flag: a white flower with purple streaks, almost like a raspberry ripple ice cream (but different colours!)
• Menton: a pale coral pink tulip
• Queen of the Night: the infamous black tulip.

And I had either three or five pots to plant them in. Neither was easy for the maths. As I'd also found 55 alliums, I split the 40 tulips between three pots, and the alliums between the remaining two.

And I'm hoping they'll grow. I figured the fact that some of them are sprouting already is a good sign, they're obviously going to be late flowering, I won't be having tulips in April I'm sure. But I hope they'll manage something at some point this year, if not there's always next year.

Normally I'd plant some pansies or something that was already flowering to make the pots look a bit prettier, but not this time. It all feels very disorganised, most likely because it is, but I thought it waa about time these tulips were planted. They're a good four months later than they should be.

As I said before, whoops, tulips!

Behind the Orangery at Blickling

I've already shared some of my pictures from Blickling, especially of the Hellebores and Hydrangeas from behind the Orangery. But there's one shot I haven't shared yet, and I think it's a bit of a special one. To me it looks as if it could be a painting, rather than a photo and it has a wistful feel to it. 

What do you think?

The painting feel is I think because of the green rising at the bottom of the photo. In reality the green is probably not very romantic at all and caused by the damp weather and soil against the wall, but in the photo it takes on an entirely different role emulating the fields which surround Blickling, with the hydrangeas almost taking on tree-shaped forms in the make-believe landscape.

Or maybe that's just me?

Either way, I was pleased to discover this shot as I looked through my photos. Not bad for an iPhone!