Primping and preening

I've been playing with layout a bit this evening - what do you think? I remember Carrie saying a while ago that dark text on a white ground was hard to read, so I hope this is better. Anwyay, I've tried so many combinations now that I can't really see them properly any more. Tell me what you think!

A great year for...

It seems to be a brilliant year for nearly everything. There just a few exceptions I've noticed. The irises aren't all that plentiful round here so far, I don't know whether it's still early for them or they didn't quite get what they wanted at the right time.

The chickeweed is having a marvelous time of it. Bindweed not so bad as some years. I think this difference may be because chickweed copes with a dry spell better.

My few adventures into tulip planting have been very successful; it remains to be seen how well they will come up again though.

I'm looking forward to pulling up the forget-me-nots so I can have a good weed round, but I'll give them a bit longer to set seed yet. I know this sounds silly - they're so common, so invasive, but one year, I didn't, and then we didn't have many for a couple of years after that and I missed them a lot. They look nice with so many other things.

My beer traps for slugs are doing very well, but I do resent spending the money on beer for them!

PS I find all this daylight confusing. It's like suddenly playing in a position right in the middle of the pitch, and not being able to orientate myself. How do you know when to stop, when you've been at it for ages and it's still not just daylight, but sunny?!

Conundrum

We've just watched Doctor Who. The episode we saw was "Amy's Choice". I enjoyed it very much - more than I often do - but what struck me was that in the parts filmed in the village, it starts of summertime, with sunshine and roses and flowers in the beds, but by the end the hedges are bare and the roses look all too obviously shipped in. So what I'm wondering is whether they did in fact film the whole thing in the winter and it just happened to be a sunny day to start with, or whether the change was deliberate as the atmosphere of those scenes grew darker. If you've seen it, did you notice this, and what do you think?

(More news about Emily's garden later)

Seeds

Today I sowed the following in heated propagators in the conservatory:

Lettues, Bronze Arrowhead
Celery
Courgettes
Cucumbers, Mini White
Broccoli Raab (like broccoli flavour but leafy)
Parsley (french)
Basil, Holy Green
Lettuce, Reine de Glaces
Gourds mixed
Courgettes (yellow)

Getting everything ready to sow, including sorting through loads and loads of seeds, took *ages*. Am quite chuffed to have the first lot on though.

If you know that some of these are duff/ shouldn't be in heat/ shouldn't be sown now.... I'm not sure I want to know!

Overheard in a Surrey garden

"Look, I am the human. I am in charge here. I'm trying to help - are you listening to me? If you scratch me again, I won't just put you on the compost heap, I'll put you in the wheelie-bin, so there."

March.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is March. I'm telling you that, because if I don't you will almost certainly mistake it for January.

Only the first of these photos was taken in the garden, the others were out on walks. Or slithers, as you might call them.

A little triumph: I had always wanted snowdrops in the garden and it took me three years to get them settled, but I think they're here to stay now:




Ashdown Forest:



Closer to home, Holmwood Common:



The only greenery to be seen on the trees is lichen:



Four Wents Pond, Holmwood Common

Writing

Hello all. Sorry it's been so quiet on here lately. I will be adding a few items to my writing blog over the next couple of days. They're not new but they have appeared elsewhere and I want to gather them together.

http://snappywords.blogspot.com/

I will be back here to write about gardening shortly.

PS Erm, apologies if the first isn't quite what you expect to read of me. It's actually very tame by my standards but I know expectations and context make a big difference. Hopefully it's OK.