Our first year.

We've had my brother staying over this weekend to attend the rugby so it was a late night; we got to bed at 3.00am. When I looked out at the garden this morning it looked pretty sparse and later on, whilst reading 'Dream Gardens', the gardening book I was reviewing for a local free magazine I read, "The true test of any garden is not how it looks in June and July, when borders are brimming and colours explode like fireworks, but how it looks through the long, cold months of winter".
Because we still have lots to do to give the garden shape and form I have to fight the urge to dig the borders because underneath that unforgiving surface are a myriad bulbs just waiting to burst out. I've hacked into them too often in earlier springs when I've been impatient to start gardening again. Hopefully, in years to come I will have structure with box topiary and wooden edges to the vegetable patch. We can but dream.

My first snowdrop!

In two days time we will have been in this house for a whole year, whoppee. I've stopped rushing the garden as it's looking fairly respectable now but it really is the worst time of year for this garden. With so much snow and such low temperatures for this area (minus 11.5 degrees on Boxing day, minus 4.5 degrees at the start of this week) a lot of our plants have suffered. Apart from the new growth on my lilac and two new shoots on a clematis there isn't much else going on in the garden. Not on the surface that is. On closer inspection there are masses of tulips poking their green tips boldly through the compost in our pots but in the ground itself we are still awaiting the carpet of spring bulbs. When I tidied up the borders today I was delighted to find a solitary snowdrop - the first one up from all the bulbs I planted in the Autumn. It's so rewarding when the fruits of your labour show their face. It's like a present.