Green Is The Colour

It comes as no surprise to me that the birth stone for May is emerald. Everywhere you look the land has awoken with a vibrant verdant lushness that can only herald the arrival of this most pleasant month.
Norton Conyers is now flexing its growing muscles and each day brings a new delight to cherish as Spring makes its presence felt. There is to be a grand dinner at the house on Friday hosted by Sotherbys, to present the HHA restoration award to Lord and Lady Graham, so we have been busy mowing with a vengeance and tidying up the clock tower garden where the restored summer house is looking lovely. We have still found time to wander down to the lake to admire the bluebells though, life is too short not to appreciate the things nature gives us for free!

"Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart"
Russell Page

Glorious Day

I was reminded again yesterday how lucky I am being able to work outside on what was a glorious spring day. The colours of the garden appeared at their most vibrant set as they were against a cloudless afternoon sky. We spent most of the morning putting up the plant supports in the main border, a job I always enjoy as you always end up with such different shapes when you build them with hazel sticks. We are late doing them this year making pushing the sticks deeply into the earth rather difficult, especially after such a dry spell. After lunch we moved onto the eternal task of weeding, now that the temperatures are rising the weeds grow at twice the rate of the garden plants and we shall be waging a constant war on them until late September.

"For in the nature of things, if we consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver"
Martin Luther

Progress

One of the areas of the garden much in need of renovation is now nearly complete. The spring garden has been replanted and although it will take a couple of years for things to settle in, it is already looking more cohesive. Giles has laid a new path with a bird bath feature at the cross section, it has yet to be gravelled and the bath cemented in place but I can already see the pleasure the birds will have using it, and us watching them use it. He plans to grow a dwarf water lily in the receptacle which would look sweet, but I have a feeling that Shandy might take a liking to the odd bath too which might be troublesome!

One of the stars of the spring garden at the moment is this little plant on the left, Mertensia  virginica  it is fully hardy and once it has flowered completely disappears until the next spring. My photo doesn't do the colour justice as the blue is really intense and brightens up any woodland setting. Placed amongst hellebores, hostas and trilliums it will make quite a show.







"He who moves not forward, goes backward"
Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe

Spring Has Sprung

In the week since I was last at Norton Conyers the garden has sprung to life, thanks largely to the stunning Easter weather, who would have thought we would be blessed with such a good spell so early. We have been busy potting up the dahlias, dividing the sale plants and mowing the grass. It is now all steam ahead for the gardening season, the tasks naturally follow one from another at this time of year, when the willow hedge has been cut we shall have to turn our attention to sowing and planting.  The clocks going forward have shaken us out of winter dormancy encouraging us to extend the working day to eight hours, that will take some getting used to again!

A new garden gate has been ordered but I think Shandy will miss the old one!

"Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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