From Spring Flowers to Snow Showers

As we leave March behind it feels like winter is back with us. Woke up today to gales and horizontal rain. Over the course of the day we've even seen sleet and hail as well as the odd sunny spell - and there's snow on them there hills.

Before today there was definitely a feeling of Spring in the air - lambs doing there lamb racing bouncy things in the fields - things coming into bloom (one of the camellia bushes is in full flower, there are primroses out, the daffodils and crocus of course, and the promise of tulips).

The pieris in particular was attracting large numbers of bumble bees of all things:

Hopefully this is winter's final fling, and there is better weather to come . . .

Getting Growing

As Spring finally seems to be here, it's been time to get thinking about the new growing season. It's been such a cold start to the year that we're a little later getting growing - but in addition to the onions / chillis - we do have a range of seeds (tomatoes, courgettes, peppers) planted up on the windowsill awaiting germination.

The onions are doing ok, although I'm a little unconvinced about whether these spindly little seedlings will actually turn into monster onions!

A couple of weeks back we also planted up four tubs of potatoes, which are now sitting in the big greenhouse and showing the first signs of life. Otherwise we've been digging over the veg plots, and yesterday I did some weeding in the fruit cage, clearing out lots of dead strawberry leaves.

Everything is looking good there - all the fruit bushes are putting on their first leaves, and lots of new canes are coming up round last year's raspberries:

Speaking of fruit, the rhubarb is also doing very nicely thank you:

Mud Month?

Was looking for something interesting to say about February and its weather (see below), and came up with the following from Wikipedia:

Historical names for February include the Anglo-Saxon terms Solmonath (mud month) and Kale-monath (named for cabbage) as well as Charlemagne's designation Hornung. In Finnish, the month is called helmikuu, meaning "month of the pearl"; when snow melts on tree branches, it forms droplets, and as these freeze again, they are like pearls of ice. In Ukrainian, the month is called лютий meaning the month of ice or hard frost.

Actually 'mud month' is a little unfair - February really wasn't that bad - still quite cold, but generally rather sunny:

Thus far, March is continuing cold but sunny - the Green Shoots of Spring remain 'un-sprung' for the most part. St David's Day has come and gone without a daffodil to be seen - although there are signs of flowering any day now . . .