Spring Cleaning the Garden

The last few days I've spent a good deal of time working in my garden. I'm reaping the rewards of some hard work in the autumn but even so I have a lot of aching muscles which haven't been used much during the winter months. It's so satisfying to see the earth that has been flattened and compacted by winter rain turning to a lovely rich black as I clear all the debris and fork it over. This stage only lasts a short time until the wind and sun dry it off but the general effect remains and all the new growth pushing its way into the spring sunshine is clearly visible. I've by no means finished but enough is done to make a real difference to the way the garden looks. Above is the rather winter weary garden before I started.


A bit of before..........


...and after. A lot more of the bed is visible here as the before picture was taken a couple of weeks ago.


Taken from about halfway up the garden looking towards the house. The trees are apples, a Victoria plum and a pear, they will look lovely in a few weeks. The plum is always first and when that flowers I can always be certain of seeing a pair of bullfinches:) The large tree in the background is the oak which Neil and Ces were married under on a wonderful hot,sunny day last June. And this is where I indulge in a little nostalgia trip:)


This is the oak tree with the first of the eighty-odd wedding guests.


A nervous looking groom and minister waiting for the bride - the minister is Francesca's brother and it was his first wedding! He did it beautifully too.


The bride and her father arriving.


Last one - this is inside the marquee, most of the chairs were on the top lawn at this point being used as seating for the guests. The tree is real! I had two old and decrepit apple trees removed to make room for the marquee but I told them they had to work round the crab-apple. It actually made rather a nice feature.




This is the helleborus orientalis that I showed in bud in a post at the end of January.



Magnolia buds starting to open - just in time for the snow that has been forecast for Sunday and Monday!


L and I are off to London tomorrow for the Country Living Spring Fair, it's an early start as we are getting the 7.27am train but at least we'll have a leisurely breakfast to look forward to. Below are a couple of photos of Gabriel taken last week, he's in Suffolk this weekend visiting his other granny and grandad and his great granny who was 90 on Thursday. She has said that the best present she could have would be to see Gabriel but she has no idea that she is actually going to. I'd love to be there when she realises - Neil is under instructions to take photos!



Gabriel and his mummy.



Gabriel with granny.

This has ended up being rather a bitty sort of post but there we are - sometimes that's just how it goes.