Smile Please!

A grey Shropshire morn resolved itself into a bright sunshiny day.   I spent a good part of it leaf collecting.  Celia and Iain's garden is surrounded by native trees as well as hosting a variety of garden specimens and accumulates a huge amount of leaf litter, all generously laced with ash seed.  It's no good as a mulch because every ash seed will germinate and the resulting forest of saplings is a gardening disaster!  So I filled their garden waste bin and a number of  50 litre compost sacks.   You could see the difference in the cleared paths but this is a job that is never finished!

The garden plays host to a good number of unusual and very interesting plants but while the common Crocus tommasinianus features in extra pic, this cream washed form catching my eye as it opened in the sunshine, it is the diminutive double snowdrop, Lady Elphinstone, just emerging into the light that wins the day.

After lunch, I set off home stopping in Welshpool hoping to buy Charlotte seed potatoes but actually leaving the garden centre with a Witch Hazel for the garden.  They'd sold out of Charlotte but I couldn't resist the chance to try a Witch Hazel in the new garden having had to leave a super one behind in Norwich.   The new garden is very small but they grow quite slowly and their open habit makes them great for underplanting with things that like dappled shade.

Home alone for a few days until Jamie returns on Monday.  However I am now working all three days in between after a 'please can you help' message this afternoon.  Sickness cover tomorrow but thankfully only a half day.   Going back to regular work in April may take a bit of getting used to.