Well, our complement of frogs certainly are! We have not one but two male voice choirs (baritone in the top pond and bass in the bottom (no I have no idea why)) with a few determined soloists in the stream. Giant wobbling clouds of spawn testify to their felicity. In previous years the froggie social spot of choice was a small archipelago of stones and pools near the otter statue, but Ibiza has been rejected this year and the beautiful frogs are all at the beach, crooning the frog from Ipanema. The toads, however, are still waking up and are not taking at all kindly to my attempts to rake out the last of the fallen leaves. I have received several hard stares from the warty ones…I don’t think they’ll be forming a band for a couple or weeks or so. A few newts have appeared and there have even been sightings of the fish we put in the pond last year (which immediately vanished). They seem to have tripled in size.
Closer to the house, the drifts of snowdrops, which have been glorious this year, are dying back now but have been replaced by bursts of purple crocus, a froth of blue and pink pulmonaria and sunny stars of anemone blanda. Every bank is covered in glowing pillows of primroses, which smell fantastic in the sun. Last year the old plum trees that provide the shade for the shade garden were rather disappointing blossom wise, but they (well one of them anyway) seem to have recovered and the shade garden is already looking rather pretty. All the new plants are settled in now. A clump of epimedium I scrounged from mum has finally started flowering and the currant bush I grew from Auntie Syb’s cutting, which did not flower last year and was as a result suspected to be a rogue blackcurrant, has finally come up trumps with pale pink flowers. Some oxlips I put in the back of the library bed a couple of years ago (to mark the site of a peony I wanted to stop treading on) have done wonderfully and will be ripe for splitting next month. (The peony is still not doing so well, despite me not galumphing on its shoots, as the viburnum next to it has seriously overgrown it’s allotted space and is now in line for a severe chop). Interesting shoots and stirrings are coming through all over and I think before too long we will have muscari and fritillaria.
I’m still working through the last of the cutting back but the home straight has surely been reached. I just have half of the bottom pond bed, maybe half of the gravel garden and a bit of the hot garden to go. I have roped in mum (who is back staying with us till her new house refurb completes – we had an hour on a Zoom with kitchen people today discussing cupboards – at least it was too cold for gardening……) and with her help I’m sure we’ll be through it by the end of the week. Having cut back all the brush near the stepping stones a welter of couch grass and other BAD THINGS have come to light. Attempts to dig these out last year have clearly failed so I spent a couple of hours yesterday bringing doom to them with the “dabber of death” (a long weedkiller filled tube with a sponge at the end for very precise application). Digging remains a real challenge for my dodgy hip but I did, with much huffing, puffing and groaning, finally manage to pop in my sale camellia and rhododendrons so Project Shrubbify ( to make all the hard to weed areas less effort) is now officially underway…..
