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!