A place in the shade

With the beautiful high temperatures we enjoyed over the weekend a place that looked quite tempting at times was my back hedge, this was the site for my snowdrops earlier in the year, it is also where my hellebore's are just about coming to an end for another year, you now have to look harder for the secrets hidden in amongst the thickening green foliage. I have just about maintained enough interest along the hedge, aquilegias are in flower along with these wild garlic

I was warned when I bought these that they would spread vigorously, I was so excited because I love wild garlic, they remind me of my holidays in Pembrokeshire where the smell of them is fantastically strong, in the wooded valleys, I can't wait for them to have colonised the whole of my back hedge. I have now had them in my garden for four years and today I can count just twelve flower heads, at this rate it will be another ten or so years before they have achieved the desired effect, then I will probably decide that the smell is far to strong to have outside my bedroom window, but at the moment I think they are wonderful.

If you look really hard you can also find these lily of the valley.

You can see how small the flowers are , the green seed head hanging over them is one of my snowdrops.

I have plenty of lily of the valley leaves poking out of the soil, but these are the only flowers I could find this year. So pretty and delicate.

colour here we come

A Beautiful sunny day here in Staffordshire and my early summer flowers are starting to emerge.

My first poppy flower for 2010

This water avens (geum rivale) has been in flower for a couple of weeks now but I think it is looking glorious today

I just love aquilega

I do think that bugle (ajuga) works so well with forget-me not,

 as you can see forget me not is everywhere in my garden, I love it,  I think the name did it for me! It won me over as a child, and I will always have it in my garden, however hard Mr S. tries to get rid of it.

I might get out again later and take some more photo's, something tells me this could be a good day for butterflies when it warms up a bit  x

noon visitor

Just as I was tweeting, on twitter, about swifts flying over my garden this arrived with its distinctive loud buzzing, and settled on the sill next to me. I went into panic mode for a short while then composed myself, grabbed my camera took a couple of very hasty photos, I then found a suitable container to trap it in so I could release it back into the Staffordshire skies.

Speckled Wood

Today we were visited by this beautiful speckled wood butterfly, it was attracted to one of my favourite garden spring flowers the forget-me-not.

This isn't the first speckled wood I have seen this year, but it is the first one I've seen in my garden, so it deserves a mention.

enjoy x

My Spring Garden

I love watching my garden grow. I like to see how it flows throughout the seasons, watching as flowers pop up and gradually disappear again as new flowers start to open up. I haven't given much thought as to where I should position each plant and once I have planted them I tend to leave them to their own devices and allow a great deal of self seeding to happen, I do weed but living where we do weeding is somewhat of a losing battle!
But this is how my front strip is looking at the moment,

You can also see the mass of dandelions beyond my garden, please let those seeds float off away from my garden.

You can see more dandelions on my third blog .Beyond My Gate

dandelions aren't my favourite flower but I do think that this week they really have been quite stunning. 

So what was that flower in my garden?

Earlier on this spring I posted a photo of some stems coming up in my garden and asked if anyone knew what they were. Well now I can show you.

These are Snakes Head Fritilary, folfalarium as they are called in Staffordshire.

If you visit my new blog beyond my gate you can follow a walk around a local nature reserve which has the most northerly population of Snakes Head Fritillary in Britain. 

To finish with just a couple of pictures of one of our mornings this week

Enjoy

Helibores and Hawthorn

I really enjoy Spring, so much to look at and enjoy, things that in a couple of weeks I will be taking for granted but at the moment are fresh and exciting. I saw my first swallows for 2010 on Sunday 11th April, later than usual and this morning I spent 5 minutes or so watching and listening to a chiffchaff on a walk home from village, I was so excited I had to phone Mr Smith so he could share in the moment, neither the swallows or chiffchaff  sightings were from my garden though, so I cannot include them on my bird list, maybe today will be the day.
I can, though, report that the hawthorn has started to flower and my helibores are again stunning, I only have a couple of groups, but they give such a lift to the back hedge.

My glorious helibores

Hawthorn

Happy Easter

My first daffodils of this spring, just in time to cut a few for Easter. SO late this year.

Happy Easter everyone

This isn't supposed to happen in April

I was convinced that the evidence of the huge snowflakes that fell last night would have vanished by the time I got up this morning, so what a shock to see the fields and common covered in snow. I know that Scotland has had some terrible conditions and this is nothing compared to that but this is Staffordshire and I wasn't expecting to see this in April.
So with the risk of boring you all with yet more pictures of snow I had to document it.

And even the hawthorn hedge didn't provide enough shelter for these helebores 

I had to go out for most of the day, needless to say the blue sky has vanished behind grey clouds and all the snow has been washed away by the rain, so back to normality again.

Garden friend and foes

Another busy day out in the Garden, 200 onion sets have been planted out, The apple tree stump has finally been lifted, the hedge has been cut and the flower bed has been tidied up a little removing all the old brown iris leaves to make way for this years growth. It was when I was tidying up the flower bed that I made the following discoveries.

This Garden friend, the 7 spotted ladybird, is a very welcome inhabitant of our garden.

But hiding in amongst the same leaves were these not so welcome,

the colours are so varied , it's such a shame that they cause such devastation in the garden.

Then more were found hiding inside an old chimney pot.

 I don't like the idea of killing them and I know that if I just toss them across the track into the common most of them would be back in the garden by tomorrow, so I put them into a bucket and carried them up the lane.

I then emptied them out onto the verge half a mile away from my home and no where near anybody elses property either, hopefully most will be found by the local thrushes and badgers.

 But some will survive I am sure.

On my way back home I stopped on a few occasions to pick up some litter and to photograph these lesser celandine  (Ranunculus ficaria)

And to finish the day off perfectly we watched a March hare running around on the common which lifted a Meadow pipit.