Yesterday I was contacted by a garden writer and photographer to arrange a good time to come and take some photos of our garden.

‘Hope things are well with you and Spring is coming on nicely’ she wrote…

I whizzed around the garden with my camera to snap a few photos to illustrate where we are with ‘Spring coming along nicely’. It tends to arrive quite late here tucked away in the Grwyne Fawr valley at 1200′ in the Black Mountains.  We’ve had mostly a very mild winter this year – just about up until the time when Spring should be arriving and then it turned cold.  We’ve had some bright, sunny days, so I’m not complaining but mostly cold easterly or northerly winds and cold nights with some frost over the last few weeks,… and some snow.

So here are some photos I took yesterday.  So judge for yourself whether ‘Spring is coming along nicely’.

bare branches in the forest fruit garden

the permaculture wheel

Honesty and rhubarb

Hellebores

First tulips

Broad beans planted out in the potager

Orange favourite tulips not showing colour yet

Blue hyacinths in the woodyard

Hyacinth ‘Woodstock’

primroses

still cutting winter firewood

copper rings ready for the courgette plants

runner bean tranches prepared – hazel tunnel to support them next task

pussy willows and golden saxifrage

hawthorn hedge next to pond greening up

marsh marigolds starting to flower

cowslips

fritillaries

lots of salad in the greenhouse

Marianne. First trough of tulips in full flower

Is it Spring yet?  Our first house martins have arrived, the ponds are full of tadpoles, birds are investigating our nest boxes and we are feeding a hedgehog with our cats which has obviously just woken up from its winter hibernation – so I guess it is.

And I planted our early potatoes today – having chitted them in a cool shed and warmed up the soil first with a covering of black plastic. This week I have dug up lots of ‘volunteer’ potatoes – the ones you always manage to leave behind no matter how hard you try to harvest them all – when preparing the runner bean tranches. These were showing signs of sprouting so that’s the sign that it’s time to plant this year’s crop.  (The ones I dug up were perfectly good to eat).

Spring is coming along nicely.