No Change !

No photos this week - I forgot to take a freshly charged battery with me, not that there was much change from last week - the weather has been too cold and wet and the garden has remained pretty static. The Echinops that were planted out have taken a real battering and are not looking very likely contenders for "survivor of the year" awards.
After watering the greenhouse, I spent the rest of the day at the fruit bed, weeding on an industrial scale - removing huge swathes of nettles, creeping buttercup, couch grass and willowherb as well as old blackcurrant stumps and roots. I dig these out with a combination of garden fork, mattock, and a set of heavy duty loppers. The trick is to remove the sycamore and currant roots without upsetting those of the apple and pear trees and though there are bound to be a couple of wrong decisions, I think I did pretty well. I then rotovate the ground with the Mantis (which I cannot praise highly enough - for a small machine, it does pack a punch) then give it a rake over to level it - one more full day should see the fruit bed finished and then I can move on to the next area, which will be down by the greenhouse steps and around the holly tree beside them.
Looking back at the blog for last year, we had lupins, the white geraniums, oriental poppies and astrantia
and geums all flowering just now - this year we have 1 half open lupin and a couple of poppies. The Asrantia is nowhere close but the Geum are looking about ready to flower, as are the Geraniums.
That's it for this week - next week I will have some more piccies and hopefully some more colour in the border to write about.