Still no daffies!

Well, the Alness Spring Show has been and gone and in the garden, there is still not a daffodil in bloom - which is a real shame as I was hoping to enter 5 of the old fashioned original daffs. Never mind there's always next year. They are about a fortnight later than usual this year, so hopefully we'll get a show soon, as the snowdops were a fortnight later this year too. With this in mind I might actually lift some after flowering and force them on in the greenhouse for next years show.
Spent most of the day weeding and tidying up the top border -more or less a full day, which is less time than last year and much much more than the year before - in fact the actual weeds are not the problem, it's the removal of the weeds without damaging any of the bulbs or plants in the border that makes it so slow.
So there you have it - nothing too exciting - the most exciting thing about the day was the discovery of a newt in the border!

Winter has returned

Friday this week wasn't too bad weather wise but it was definitely colder (and since then we have had more snow and plummeting temperatures at night)
I began by cuting away all the old foliage from the Hellebores to give their blooms the chance to shine - I can only hope they haven't succumbed to the sudden temperature drop.
Still no daffs in flower - which is a shame - I hope we have some by Friday 15th as there is a local Spring Bulb show on Saturday 16th - I'd really like to take a vase of the old original daffs that proliferate in the bottom section of the garden as I really like them....

 

After tidying up the Hellebores, I got the wheelbarrow out and trundled 14 barrows of well rotted muck onto the potato patch - ideally this should have been done in the back end of 2012 but as we didn't know what areas of the garden were going to be available for this years veg, it had to wait.

After this I planted out the strawberry runners that have been growing on in the greenhouse. These had been placed outside about a month ago - strawberry plants benefit from a cold spell, so planting them out now does no harm and frees up more time for when things start getting hectic in April.

To finish the day, I started into clearing up the herbaceous borders -a seemingly endless task "

That's it for this week..............

First Day of March

And still not a daffodil in flower ! We all thought that with the mild winter we had up here, things would be early on the go in the garden but for some reason, the oppposite seems to be true with only the snowdrops and a handful of crocus in flower - there are signs of life but not too many.
Anyway, this week was spent applying a winter wash to all the fruit trees - something I meant to do before now but forgot!.
And the Mantis was brought out the potting shed and put to work, rotovating the rosebed (where all the dahlias will be going)

followed by the cordon sweet pea bed (where the veg was last year)

 and the area of the fruit bed that was under black polythene all winter (where this years potatoes will be going.

The rest of the day was spent clearing up branches and setting light to one of the last remaining burn piles in what will be the vegetable garden - only one left now, but it's a biggie !

And to finish on a bright note - a pretty little hellebore!