The Sun has got his hat on....Hip Hip Hip Hooray!

What a great start to the season! Glorious sunshine for over a week now, work is up together for the time being, and heck......we even managed to tidy up our own garden a bit.

As usual, at the gardens in Mudeford consisting of forty cottages, during my journey around, a coffee was offered to me. So the mower was turned off, a chair pulled out, and tulips discussed. The lady of the house was very proud of her pot of yellow tulips, telling me how they should be dwarf, but doesn't mind as they are so beautiful anyway, and indeed they are as they positively glowed in the morning sun. A very pleasant fifteen minutes was spent sat at that table before my work continued.

Another place just around the corner has a rockery covered in Aubretia. This isn't what I would call one of my favourites, as for me it needs to ideally flower longer for the amount of space it can take up for the rest of the year. But there is no doubting the beauty of it's colour, and this rockery is heaving with it.

The first applications of lawn food have started to go down now. The soil in the whole area is incredibly light and sandy, and so any nutrients in the soil get washed through very quickly, and as a result grass can be very difficult to keep healthy throughout the season.

The last of the dead leaves from last year are now coming off the beech hedges, to be replaced by succulent new ones. My father passed on various survival skills for the forest from his days of training in the Luftwaffe. The two most common food tips that most people know for this time of year is that young beech leaves are very sweet to eat, and can be washed down with the very sweet sap of a silver birch. Cut through a downward hanging limb and collect the sap as it drips out profusely.

It was mid-morning here, and all that could be heard were quite literally the birds and the bees......wonderful!

All tidied up, the pruned apple trees shooting nicely, a quiet cup of tea whilst I sit and reflect on the general rubbish that one does, and then it was off home.