Euphorbia Euphoria

We have resumed our battle with the rabbits. Upon entering the garden yesterday it quickly became apparent that their activity has increased with the same speed as the plant growth. As soon as the tender young shoots are pushed through the earth they nibble them off, and in the case of some of the more tender varieties like the phlox and veronica's if we don't act we will probably lose them. Consequently we spent most of the day in the main yew hedge, and yes I do mean that literally, although it was mostly Giles who climbed all the way in! We were filling in the rabbit burrows with rubble and old wire netting, if we can't chase them out we will block them out! It didn't make for a very exciting day as I'm sure you can imagine, however at one point I glanced over to the peach house and saw this exquisite Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii looking dazzling in the spring sunshine. It goes to prove that small pleasures can make ones day.

"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as to not injure future ones"
Seneca

The Big Spring Clean

I love all aspects of spring except one, the cleaning. As soon as the watery sun emerges again you start to notice all the hideous cobwebby corners of the house, shed or whatever structure it is that belongs to you. Due to this very fact I haven't blogged for a while because Giles has had our noses to the grindstone sorting out the less salubrious areas of the garden at Norton Conyers.
We started with the apple store removing the now rotting or mummified fruit and sweeping out the detritus. We then moved on to the two big storage sheds and the bothy, burning any rubbish to be found and gathering all the scrap metal to go to the dealers. I swear if Nicky sees another rat she will have a nervous breakdown, she deals with the spiders for me and I cope with anything with a tail!
Finally yesterday we began to garden again, it was time to cut back the buddlejas and some of the larger shrubs and our last chance to take root cuttings from the romneyas and eryngiums, these have been placed in the peach house as you can see from the photo. I also got to play at being a bee by giving the peach flowers a little extra pollination with the aid of a paintbrush, it certainly is a varied life being a gardener!

"Our house is clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy"
Anon

March Musings

Sunshine and snow is how to sum up today, when the cold wind brought in the showers we felt the icy nip, although within a few minutes they blew away. We returned to the woods to plant trees this morning, blackthorn, lime,hazel and oak and in order to make space for them we built a bonfire and cut down elder and burnt it. The heat was welcome on our cold faces. Shandy was a pretty picture with her black coat against the snowdrops.
The only other thing of note to mention was a visitor to our garden yesterday, Dave spotted a sparrow hawk perched upon the compost bin feasting on an unfortunate blue tit, the feathers were plucked with vigour poor little thing, I hope it wasn't one of my garden regulars!

"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush"
Doug Larson