That I might simply fancy there
One little flower – a primrose fair.
Just opening into sight:
As in the days of infancy,
An opening primrose seemed to me
A source of strange delight.
Sweet memory! Ever smile on me;
Nature’s chief beauties spring from thee;
Oh, still thy tribute bring!
Still make the golden crocus shine
Among the flowers the most devine,
The glory of the spring.
(Anne Bronte – Extract from ‘Memory’ 1844)
We can see how much Anne loved the spring and we are just the same. Seeing the green shoots and tight buds coming through is truly invigorating. Even the weather is slowly, if inconsistently, warming up and becoming sunnier. Of course the rain showers are welcome as well because the young plants do thrive with the cocktail of both sun and rain and we have had plenty of both in April. However, having just checked the forecast we are now due some cold weather again!
In truth it has not been the busiest month for us and that is because we did quite a lot of work in late February and March, in between snow showers! This has meant that Jenny and I have been able to do a little bit more planning ahead for the summer months, particularly as we have Emily’s 200th birthday to celebrate in late July.
As mentioned in last month’s diary post we have been busy developing a new bed for Emily’s occasion and we now want to progress things a bit further. Jenny has been importing quite a few new plants recently to that area as well as keeping other parts of the garden also well stocked. We are thinking of introducing, in selected areas, some more wild flowers which we hope will attract bees and butterflies. We are thinking of Emily’s love of nature and the wild!
As any gardener knows we can’t expect everything to work first time and we will also have to be patient in waiting for things to develop. One casualty we have had over winter is that we lost a few of our herb plants form the new herb pot that we introduced last year but we will start it going again with a few additions probably from cuttings of our own herb plants at home.
On a more positive note the lawn seems to have wintered really well and had its first rake and cut this month so hopefully it will keep up its good ‘green’ condition as we go into the growing season.
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