Spring Flowers: March

Tags

Celandines, cherry-plum, daffodils, flowers, garden, gardening, lathyrus, primroses, scilla, Suffolk, violets, wild flowers

I managed to find a number of flowers to photograph in my garden this March.

We have areas in our garden that are left wild. This is one of the many violets that bloomed in March. I think this is an Early Dog Violet (Viola reichenbachiana )

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna ).  Not only are the flowers so shiny and buttercup-yellow but the leaves are interesting too. They are patterned and blotchy with different shades of green and then there is the strange black line down the centre of the leaf looking like it was drawn carelessly with a felt pen.

This is all that was left of some of my favourite tulips after a Muntjac deer came visiting. I wasn’t too happy about this.  I can see a grape hyacinth bulb that was dug up as well.

I am very fond of Scillas and this was a patch of them as they were beginning to flower.

This is a pea – Lathyrus ‘Spring Beauty’ just as it too, began to flower.

Our Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera ) always looks good against a blue sky. Cherry Plum are the first of the flowering trees to have blossom in the spring.

Cherry Plum blossom

Pots of ‘Tete a Tete’ miniature daffodils and just a few pale blue crocus.

Sweet Violets (Viola odorata ) growing under the Crabapple tree.

The first of the garden daffodils to flower. It isn’t easy to see in this photo but the trumpets are a darker orange colour.  I think they might be ‘Jetfire’ daffodils.

A large clump of Primroses ( Primula vulgaris) growing in the verge at the front of the house.

Primrose flower. This is a pin-eye flower, with the pinhead-like stigma in the centre of the flower and the stamens hidden below.

I showed you a ‘thrum-eyed’ primrose in an earlier post 

‘Thrum-eyed’ primrose – the long stamens are visible in the centre of the flower but the shorter stigma is invisible.

I have made a slideshow of some of the daffodils we have planted round the perimeter of the garden and round the big pond.

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My music selection is Julie Fowlis singing Lon-dubh; a beautiful rendition in Gaelic of Paul McCartney’s song ‘Blackbird’.

Thanks for visiting!

Monday’s Garden

Tags

blackthorn, bullace, cowslip, daffodils, Elmer Fudd, fritillaries, greengage, jonquils, ladybird, lathyrus, Mothering Sunday, pieris, primulas, rabbits, saxifrage, simnel cake, wild cherry

 

I must admit to having an Elmer Fudd moment this morning.  I went to have a look at the cowslip/primula plants I had transplanted last weekend and to my horror I saw that all the flowers and buds had been eaten on almost all the plants.  I suspect some wascally wabbit!  I will now not know until next spring which of the plants are normal cowslips to be planted at the top of the ditch and which are the different ones to be grown on elsewhere.

Very strange weather today.  It was quite warm – in fact it got to 18 degrees centigrade but we only got a little sunshine at midday and then a few showers of rain during the afternoon.  Quite humid all day and extremely cloudy this afternoon.   I walked round the garden checking on the bird feeders and looking to see what plants had started to grow or flower since Saturday.  I hadn’t been able to get into the garden at all yesterday as I had been busy cooking lunch after coming home from church and then entertaining Mum all the afternoon.  We had had a good Mothering Sunday service at church and all the women had been presented with little posies of flowers.  The Rector looked wonderful in his rose coloured chasuble but sneakily removed it before I could photograph him!

My eldest daughter A had sent me a card which had arrived in the post on Saturday and she telephoned me when I got back from church.  E gave me a card and two stoneware pots for the garden.  Mum arrived bringing with her an apple pie and a simnel cake.  My mother will be 84 in a couple of weeks time and can hardly see but she still manages to bake and garden and run her house with no help at all.

Mum’s simnel cake.

 

The goose is still sitting on her nest on the island.  She probably only has another week or so to go until her eggs hatch and then we’ll see how many goslings there are.  While I walked round the pond I heard not only frogs croaking but also what I assume to be toads as well.  We do get toads in the garden but I’ve never noticed them in the pond before.  I also saw flower buds on the marsh marigold in the big pond that has never flowered before as well.  I was really quite pleased about this as the pond has looked so awful since we had the work done to remove most of the willow scrub.  What willows we have left are full of pussy willow flowers and alive with so many bees.

The wild damson or bullace tree is in flower.

The wild or bird cherry is also just coming into flower too.

Our greengage tree has its first flowers.  We planted it the autumn before last and it didn’t flower at all last year but grew very well.  My mother-in-law had asked us if we would grow one as she likes greengages so we got it especially for her and we call it Joyce (her name).

The blackthorn at the front of the house is now in full flower.  The tree at the back of the house has finished flowering and the tree by the front gate hasn’t started to flower yet.  The front of the house is colder than the back and the gate is coldest and shadiest of all.

My pieris ‘Forest Flame’ has new leaves on it.

The saxifrage has started to flower.

The new Frittilaries under the crabapple are flowering.  I am pleased to see that there is a white one.

Primulas.

Cowslip.

Daffodils at the front of the house at the edge of the ditch.

A seven-spot ladybird on a daffodil.  A lot of our daffodils suffered in the hail and rain we had last Wednesday and they also have to put up with all sorts of wild fowl trampling over them.

An orange-red cowslip.

Jonquils.

Lathyrus vernus ‘Spring Beauty’.  This is an ornamental vetch – a member of the pea family.