Ah some sunshine at last but still not quite spring yet.  The garden is awfully soggy, as are most of the pots on the patio.  The snowdrops are multiplying and making carpets of white in the stumpery and the raised bed with a few small clumps elsewhere in the borders.  The hellebores have popped up with some in flower but most are just in bud.  The white ones flower first but their flowers are still facing down just now.  There are a few flowers still on the witch hazel but they are going over now.  The flowers of the viburnum are in little clusters of pink, starting deep pink and fading to almost white.  It had a good cut back last year so there aren’t that many flowers on it yet.   Winter honeysuckle is never that showy but the tiny flowers are lovely and have a nice scent too.  The flowers are a bit sparse on mine but they do attract any early pollinators out and about in the late winter sunshine.  Today I cut back the miscanthus grass seed heads and the evergreen ferns that were looking rather bedraggled.  I also gave some of the plants a good tug as I went past just to check they were still held in place by their roots.  Often if there are vine weevil grubs about eating the roots you may not actually notice anything is wrong but if you tug the plant and it just comes away in your hand then you know there is a problem.  I did this with the patio plants and the heuchera came away in my hand so I checked the soil, lo and behold lots of vine weevil grubs.  The birds had a nice wee feed.  I usually mange to keep on top of the vine weevils using nematodes but I was late in spring last year as it was a very dry spring and you should really apply them after a good rainfall,  and  I forgot in to apply some in autumn.

I was gifted an Amarylis at Christmas and it shot up very quickly and now is over.  I had a good show of flower heads but only 2 tiny leaves.  I have now cut the flower heads off and will let the leaves keep growing and see if I can keep the bulb going.  Talking of bulbs the purple crocus in the conservatory and now in flower and the cyclamen are still flowering away.  It will soon be time to give the cyclamen their summer rest. The daffodils are up and in bud so it won’t be long now until we get a nice splash of bright yellow in the front garden along with the gorgeous scent of the mahonia.  Lots to look forward to.