Fresh green foliage

March winds, April showers, bring forth May flowers! as the saying goes.

Certainly this spring we have had some lovely blooms - especially aquilegias and rhododendrons. See a view across our garden:

View across our garden with brilliant rhododendron and blue, white & pink aquilegias

But at this time of year the foliage is just as stunning as the flower show. Herbaceous plants throw up bright new shoots and leaves which are so beautiful before the onslaught of bugs, slugs and dry weather

Archemillas - so called because sap from the plant was used in alchemy. This is actually their best time of year, because later on their bitty yellow flowers mask the beautiful leaves. They also seed everywhere, so best cut those flowers early before they set to seed!

Fantastic hostas in the garden around the pond. The i sculpture is home made from items discovered in the garden.

Delicate foliage from delphiniums

Feathery fennel

Dramatic flag irises at the border of the pond

New water-lily leaves - with rather a lot of pond weed.

Ground elder and bees nest

We have a horrible invasion of Ground Elder. This is creeping in from the adjacent field and despite much pulling and hacking in previous years, and indeed complete digging over of one bed and putting down a plastic membrane, the stuff keeps coming.The roots are worse, if it's possible, than couch grass and bindweed, and it's already going up to flower.

So at the weekend Paul got stuck in again. After half an hour's digging Paul reported a lot of buzzing, angry bees. He'd dug up some herbaceous plants, aquilegias and cornflowers so at first we thought that the bees were cross that their food source had been moved, But they kept coming, hovering just above the soil. Eventually we discovered that we'd disturbed their underground nest. Another small dig with a trowel and there were bees flying out everywhere. So we covered up the entrance hole with some leaves and left them to it  ..... and went on to another patch of Ground Elder, we have lots to choose from!

This morning the bees seemed to be going about their business as usual.

First potatoes

We had our first potatoes of 2015 today. About 2lbs of lovely firm, delicious, white Colleen potatoes from one of our green tubs we started off in the conservatory.
It's great to eat our own produce.  The potatoes taste so much better than shop-bought and there's no chemicals added.