Sunny Monday

Hello!  I bet you didn’t expect to hear from me today on a Monday!  I had such a lovely time in the garden in the sunshine over the weekend that my laptop was completely forgotten – and to be honest, I would hope that you were busy doing something outdoors in the lovely weather too, not sitting inside looking at your computer either! 🙂

I’m going to try something different on the blog this week … I’ve been looking through my photos and once again, I’ve got more than I can reasonably put into one post so I’m going to try to write a couple of shorter posts this week to make sure that I get them all out and not overwhelm myself by Friday!  If you’re on my newsletter list you’ll have had an email today but you won’t get another one until Friday when I usually send them (as hopefully I will have caught up with myself by then!) – I’ll list all the posts in the email so you’ll be able catch up and of course you can always come back to the blog as well.

It has been so beautiful over the weekend.  Spring sunshine, warmth and a sky so blue you could dive into it.  The trees are in blossom, the birds are singing from dawn till dusk and despite a layer of frost this morning, it really feels as if winter is over for this year.

I spent the whole day in the garden on Saturday, cutting down overgrown shrubs and branches – maybe work that should have been done a month or so ago, but it’s been done now.  I always chat to the plants as I’m working so they know that I might be a bit late but it’s all intended to give them more light and space, particularly after we had our oak tree cut last year when part of it fell down into next door’s garden during a gale (thankfully, nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged).  I’m quite excited about what might grow this year now there’s more light!

I’m not very good at just sitting in the garden when I’m out there as I can always see jobs to be done, but I am always trying to be more mindful about taking a minute to appreciate what’s around me.  I could have missed these colours – the bright red of the Photinia and the yellow-green of the new Acer leaves in the centre and the red-tinged flowers of the Helleborus foetidus right by my feet as I sat on the step.  The leaves complement each other so well – I’d love to tell you that it was intentional but it wasn’t, it just worked out that way when I planted them, and the hellebore planted itself so it must have wanted to be there!

And just next to me, this wonderful clump of Muscari (grape hyacinths) – so pretty!

I told you I’d be keeping it short for today so this is pretty much it, but let me show you our Magnolia before I go.  The bees are out in force now which is lovely to see – I’ve seen honey bees and bumble bees (one of which was the biggest bee I think I’ve ever seen in my life!) and I’m glad that our garden is a spring garden with lots of flowers to attract them.

When I was talking about the magnolia the other day, I said that the flowers don’t last too long and already they are half-way through flowering, their petals scattered on the ground like confetti.

The forecast looks good for the rest of this week so I am hoping to get more time outside in the garden – I’ve got all the clearing up to do from the cutting down I did at the weekend, but my intention is to spend more time just sitting too.  And knitting, of course.  Sitting and knitting in the garden is a lovely thing to do and I have socks to show you later this week!