YIPPEE, SUNSHINE AT LAST.

After all the rain, at last the sun came out today and despite the weeks of heavy rain the crocus still manged to raise their pretty heads and open in the sunshine. From just a few clumps when we moved here 30 years ago the crocus have self seeded and spread throughout the garden. Over the years I have added a number of hybrid crocus but few remain just the self seeding ones.

I went into the garden to prune the clematis. Garden writer Margery Fish says to prune clematis on 14th February. I have tried various times to prune late flowering clematis but have found her advice to be sound. If pruned too early as I have done in the past, I have ended up with late flowers while still enjoying early summer blooms but only to find the season of flowering curtailed.

 I decided to add the Blogger search bar to my side column and have been having fun looking back at earlier posts - a search for clematis shows this  I had forgotten I had done so many posts on clematis, this post is one before I learnt how to tweak the photos so they are presented larger.

 But this is the way to see photos of Clematis on this post  Of course my first trip out to garden in 2014 left me so spoilt for choice - what to do, clematis first, but oh that shrub needs a prune too. The greenhouse cuttings needed watering and dead stems removed from Lilies and Agapanthus, which I over winter in the greenhouse.

 I had forgotten I had moved some snow drops to this little pond area where I grow hostas. So it was a nice surprise to see them in flower although my photography did not do them justice.

  A bit of weeding and tidying led me around the paths only to notice some Delphiniums are sprouting and in need of rescue from slugs. I have been meaning to move a couple of Delphiniums that grow into the apple tree, so now was as good a day as any. I was surprised the roots were only about 15-20 cms deep especially as these Delphiniums grow 7ft tall ( do you like my mixture of metric and imperial, I still struggle to use just metric must be the dressmaker in me). So more weeding around the Delphiniums and slug pellets and cloches, to help protect the early growth. Here's an earlier post with Delphiniums

Hellebores are doing well this year and are always a welcome addition to spring flowers especially as the bracts add colour for so long.

Another little pond area in the front garden with a few more snowdrops we can enjoy seeing as we enter and leave the house.

 Here are a few more snowdrops edging the path to the water barrel.

Another shot of the wayward crocus in the front garden.

More Hellebores border the drive.

Just a few spring flowers on the door step.

I also started my tomatoes, peppers and cucumber off in seed trays which I start off indoors to germinate and then move to cooler places as they grow. I was really had by Sutton seeds 5 seeds in a packet of peppers 5!! what are they playing at and how did I miss reading that on the packet. I like to have about two dozen plants I would have done better by just taking seeds out of last years peppers, I'll never learn.

So 5 hours gardening was a really good start for 2014 and resting at the computer playing with photos and my garden blog a nice way to round the day off.

Happy gardening.