Happy New Year

I realise that it's the 9th of March, a long time after January 1st, but today the sun was shining so brilliantly I took the chance to start tidying the garden.

For the record, starting a petrol lawnmower with your left hand when your right arm has tennis elbow, is really bloody hard work!

Anyway, as usual, I have digressed, it's wonderful to see everything growing, it's a new year for all my flowers.  New buds are appearing everywhere & I start to get excited about all the flowers that'll open in the coming months.
My climbing rose has gone bananas, I'm not sure, even if I add some new trellis that I'll be able to contain it.
I planted my new rose - Lady Marmalade - that I got for Christmas.  It's very cool having a rose that shares my name, albeit my adopted internet name!
The first of my tulips are flowering, daffodils on the verge of joining them, snowdrops coming to their end.
The red tips of the paeony are just pushing through the soil.
A flurry of crocus' that I don't remember planting are battling for sunshine.
It's been such a mild winter that some sweet peas are already starting to climb the willow obelisks that I made last year.
Even my verbena bonariensis has survived the winter, I'm quite delighted at how full and promising the garden looks.
I filled up my wood store too, ready for a year of barbecues & fire pit evenings.  And hopefully of pizza if a new oven can be built to take the place of Colin Falstaff, who didn't survive the winter.  I'm going to have to google where to purchase clay for oven building....
I just wish you didn't look such a billy no mates if you chose to sit around a fire pit on your own.
Although, it has to be said, usually the grass ends up catching on fire, and it's a definite bonus if there's more than one of you about to throw water on the ensuing blaze.
Perhaps the job this year should be to find a less flammable location for the firepit!

It might be that today was just a blip of sudden heat in a cool spring, but it was a delight to sit in the sunshine, surrounded by the cacophony of mowers in neighbouring gardens.  I like that spring clean of the garden, it's the beginning of the welcoming in of summer, although it does mean I really have to get down to the allotment, build my greenhouse and start my plants growing, ready for a bumper harvest - well I can but hope!