26th February

We have quite a few of our daffodils out now. Don’t ask me what variety they are but they have yellow petals and an orange trumpet. Probably about 40% of the daffodils that have come up are in bloom so far, and I noticed one little narcissi almost in bloom, but I’m pretty certain I planted more than that. Still, it is early days. There are no flowering crocuses in the ground, but the ones in the outside containers are coming up well. My eldest boy, who by the way is officially my assistant gardener, has a small pot which has produced 2 yellow ones, whilst my 2 large pots are yielding some lovely deep purple ones. The pots for indoors have been OK. One pot, well, I don’t know what the problem was, but it has 3 shoots and nothing much more. Another one has had purple crocuses blooming in turn then fairly quickly shrivelling up. The third indoor pot is showing a few tulips shoots for hopefully a few weeks' time.

 

Some photo trickery to emphasise the dogwood. I selected the colour of the dogwood on the camera screen and the function made every other colour turn to black and white tones.



Round our way, I’m always a little hesitant to open the door when I’m not expecting anyone. You never know if it will be someone wanting to talk you into changing your gas and electricity company, or asking you to set up a direct debit to their charity for as little as 78p per day, which if you did that every time someone asks, it will soon be 10 times 78p per day and rising. I’m afraid I cannot give to everyone who asks me. The other dreaded caller is someone trying to sign you up for a free inspection of your exterior walls, as I mentioned before. These can be a real con. They did it to us once and poured some water onto a brick and the water was quickly absorbed by the bricks before trickling down very far. This is allegedly evidence of old and decrepit brickwork. I went to work the next day to a wall that was 10 years old and performed the trick – with the same result as my 100 year old wall at home. They also tried to tell me that there was a fault line running from top to bottom. Actually it was a mark left from the old drainpipe, which could be clearly seen if you look at our neighbour’s wall that faced us, where their drainpipe is still in place. So when the doorbell rang my heart sank and I walked to the door with a feeling of due trepidation, but today was different. I soon saw, through the door glass, a red uniform – the postman! We had a bumper parcel delivery. My wife had ordered a few DVDs and a book from Amazon – spending her Christmas and birthday money and tokens, and buying some Mother’s Day presents. That came in 3 packages, but the crowning glory was a box addressed to me from Suttons Seeds. The final instalment of my seed buying has arrived. Crown Prince squash, 2 varieties of broccoli, green courgette, Russian tarragon and for my first time – a 400g pack of onions sets with 160 bulbs. Wha-hey!

Next post: 28th Feb