IT MUST BE SPRING.
The resident blackbird singing in full voice at 4-30 am in the morning is a sure sign that spring has arrived. This is most unusual behaviour because in previous years it did not usually start its chorus until the first glimmer of dawn. Such was the racket that this bird was making that I was forced to alight from a warm bed and investigate what was going on.
There was not even the faintest sign of daylight, only the street lights sparkling in the gentle rain. Perhaps this bird can see or sense more that I can at this ungodly hour of the morning. Closing the window did not make much difference, as the favourite perch seems to be the Purnus Amanogawa just a few yards from the bedroom window. I suppose I will have to put up with it until it finds someone else to annoy.
Anyway to get back to the garden and things that are more in keeping with spring. Species Crocus are popping up all over the garden, and making a beautiful carpet of yellow, orange and white on the days when the sun manages to break thorough the clouds. The orange type has seeded into crevices and along the gravel path in the scree beds, along with the Narcissus Bulbocodium and Cyclamen Coum that is now naturalised in the garden, this makes for a breathtaking display when the weather permits.
Crocus vernus albiflorus that I raised from seed some five years ago has finally produced a flush of beautiful glistening white cups striped on the inside with purple. In an effort to make space in the bulb frame, this pot of seedlings was planted out in the garden and promptly forgot about them until they burst forth in a mass of white goblets. As luck would have it they were planted just outside the front window not far from a group of Sam Arnott Snowdrops which they compliment nicely.
Under the cherry tree Hepatica noblis is doing its usual thing in the company of several varieties of cyclamen coum. The silver leafed varieties of Cyclamen make a nice display even if they did not flower and seem oblivious to the weather. I was a bit worried that a heavy shower of hailstones would damage them, but they survived unscathed.
Saxifraga Myra and some of the Czech hybrids, with funny names such as Your kiss and Your smile, have nice fat flower buds just showing colour, and with as promise of greater things to come.
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