April flowers

Over Easter and the week after the weather has been brilliant - warm sunny days with just occasional cold wind and showers. Great for the flowers and trees which are starting to blossom. Birds are singing and starting to nest - a proper Spring!

It's been so lovely I've spent a lot of time in the garden - planting potatoes and beans, sowing salad and chard, potting up primroses that have seeded in the lawn - and not much time blogging.

The snowdrops have all gone over but there are hundreds of daffodils of different colours and flower-shapes growing in the beds and the lawn (great excuse for putting off the mowing!).

Some of the spring flowers are so lovely and delicate like these Erythroniums - or dogs tooth violets - growing in our front garden. They're not violets at all. Apparently the "dogs tooth" refers to the shape of the bulb.

Erythroniums or dogs tooth violets

Also Snakes Head Fritillaries which increase every year and  whose bell-shaped flowers come in a variety of colours between deep purple and cream all with their distinctive check pattern..

Snakes head fritillaries

Garden tools and machines

Well, it's April - well into the gardening year now! Still lots of tidying up and digging over to do.
I'm not a great fan of tools and gizmos but my son and hubby reckon gardening is an excuse for getting out the toys (sorry - tools) like hedge-cutters, rotovators, lawn-mowers etc. I occasionally get slightly excited about secateurs and loppers but really enjoy digging with the old heavy spage and yanking at weeds with my bare, muddy, hands.

But if mechanisation is where you're at try this link to Garden tools and stuff from Amazon and have a look around. (I get tuppence per cent from anything you buy - so go for the really, really expensive machines!)

Bumble bees

Seen a lot of big bumble bees especially on the hellebores and heathers. We've had a lovely few days with quite a bit of warm sunshine during the day which has brought out the garden flowers nicely - daffodils, hellebores, primroses, little pink starry bulbs....I saw a deep red camellia in full bloom up by a house up on the main road and some ornamental trees looking gorgeous.

However, no honey bees yet. Maybe they are still being fed by their keepers and don't need to get out yet. Hope this isn't a sign of empty hive syndrome around here. There's loads of flowers, both in the garden and the surrounding fields and hedgerows. I can't believe that not enough food can be a problem for fewer bees. More likely disease or pesticides.