Busy, busy, busy….but never so busy that we could ignore this glorious end to the day.

The view from our front window at 8.30 this evening.

Except to say – the swallows are back!    The blogosphere has been awash with reports of swallow sightings for weeks, and we were beginning to think the family who we’ve become accustomed to sharing our summer garden with had had a better offer, but at the weekend they finally returned.  Hovering at the back door, investigating whether our back hall would be a good nesting site, dive bombing the cat as she crosses the garden, and no doubt eventually, as usual, deciding to nest under the lych gate.

Not the variety or colour we ordered, but stunning nonetheless!

And the cuckoo is back too!   Unusually, our tardy swallows were beaten back here this year by the cuckoo, who’s been joining in the dawn chorus for a week now.

Spring has sprung!

As mad May approaches, activity on the nursery is ramping up, and threatening to move from “frantic” to “maybe we can spend less time eating or sleeping…” The sun is shining, the grass is growing (dammit) and the countryside is developing the spectacular lime green glow that comes with the youthful vigour of newly unfurled foliage.

All’s well with the world!   Enjoy!   (And don’t the tulips look lovely?).

It’s been  a funny old year – we seem to have been catapulted from winter to summer by day, but night time temperatures are still distinctly spring-like (just plain cold).   We’ve had mild frosts here most nights recently (Nick was to be seen scraping the ice off Louise’s windscreen at 4.30am on Sunday, although we’ll concede that given the light levels at the time, you’d have needed damn good night vision to bear witness to this). *

Lady in the bath? **

And the plants continue confused – very warm by day, very cold by night – should they grow, or what?    We grow our plants hard here, and although the day/night temperature gradients have been large, the plants seem to be coping admirably – so the magnolia flowers are intact, the cercidiphyllum foliage remains glorious, and the Dicentra continue to delight.

Our picture shows Dicentra spectabilis on our sales benches earlier today, and in spite of Plant Mad Nige’s disdain, they are shrugging off the frosts, and looking wonderful.

They are fully hardy, will grow in any reasonably moist soil (but might sulk in very acid conditions) and like a bit of shade (think woodland margin).   They’ll survive in full sun if the soil is moist.   And they have the RHS Award of Garden Merit.

What better way to brighten up a spring border?

*   The plant fair season is under way, and Sunday saw Louise heading off to spend the day selling plants to tourists and plant hunters at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.   Our most distant event of the year (repeated in September) which means a 5am departure, and a 16 hour day.   Sometimes it’s tough in horticulture!

**   One of the common names for Dicentra, based on what the flowers look like if you hold them upside down, and squeeze.   And use your imagination.

Looking good on the sales benches right now….

Brunnera Jack Frost

If you have a shady spot in your spring garden, these chaps wil light it up for you….the attractive silver-marbled foliage only grows to maybe 15 cms / 6 inches high, and is topped for many weeks through spring with lots of delicate forget-me-not blue flowers.

The plant expands slowly year by year to provide lovely ground cover, lasting from spring to maybe mid-summer (by which time the foliage will be looking a bit tired, and can be cut to ground level – if you’re that tidy a gardener!).

Brunnera will do best on reasonably moist, humus rich soil, in part or full shade – think woodland margin, where they’ll enjoy the summer shade of deciduous trees.

Many years ago, when our children were pre-school, and CBBC ,cbeebies, the cartoon channel and digital television were just TV mogul’s pipe dreams, we used to resort to recording what meagre offerings terrestial TV sent our way, and the kids would watch stuff again (and again) when there was nothing on live.   Amongst other things, this accounts for our ability, even now, to recite most of the dialogue from (the original, Gene Wilder version of) Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory….

One of the more obscure delights to emerge from the VHS machine at this time was a 1936 MGM Happy Harmonies cartoon which told of a band of subterranean elves whose job it was to add the colours of spring to the world each year, and how they fought an epic (and somewhat chaotic) battle with resurgent winter before spring was finally sprung.

In our family folklore, this has always been referred to as “The Colours of the World” although having just searched it out on YouTube (is there anything you can’t find on YouTube?) we were surprised to see it’s actually called “To Spring”.   And every year, when spring falters and our eccentric climate stumbles back into winter, the cry goes up “It’s like the colours of the world!”.

That cry is starting to sound a little worn right now, as spring 2010 splutters and falters and….well, lets just hope things are about to improve.   Easter weekend lived up to it’s reputation for meteorlogical variability, but the forecast for later this week is looking promising, and the long term forecast for April looks typical, if not actually great.   Most things on the nursery and in the garden have got buds just itching to burst, so surely any day now we’re going to see a splendid spring, aren’t we?

And if you have 9 minutes 39 seconds to spare….