Oh To Be In England Now That April Has Arrived. #SixOnSaturday #GardenTwitter

In true English weather style, we have plummeted from the dizzy double digit heights and sunny days to single numbers, cold easterly (Siberian maybe?) winds and sleety showers. Brrr! 🥶

In between the extreme weather conditions I darted outside for a few photos. Although I seem to have a brown theme going on with the photos this week. Very un-spring like.

Photo one – meet Phil doing his version of a yoga reverse down dog pose. This cheeky chappy thinks he (or she, I don’t know if it is a dog or vixen, but I think it is one of last year’s cubs) is our pet dog. Phil trots into our garden from next door’s unoccupied (soon to be occupied) plot; most days he has a snooze in the sun and a good mooch around the garden. If we are out there, he follows us around, sits close by and is inquisitive about what we are doing. He stole my gardening glove recently when I wasn’t looking and enjoyed my game of chase to get it back. He’s rarely afraid of us and is often half a pace behind me. We don’t feed him, we’re from farming families. The only time I gave him something was a dead rat that I’d recently caught. All he did was play with it for hours, throwing it about and playing a game of cat-and-rat with the magpies over who got the body.

It’s been an odd week, not just with the weather (although that’s been typically English.) I spotted these toadstools on the front lawn. Toadstools in March? 🤔 I’m not sure what these are, at first I thought of Woodland Blewit, but having poured over an old mushroom identity book I’m more inclined to think that they are Mycena Pura or Lilac Bonnet a radish smelling poisonous species. Although I’ve not been back for a sniff.

Third photo goes to the Blue bells that are budding up. These ones run along the bordering fence in a shady but sheltered spot. (A few weeks ago I mistook some budding Hyacinths for Bluebells – oops!)

The Lilac is almost out too. Lots of buds on last year’s growth. I am getting the hang of when to prune this now.

After pruning back the variegated laurel a few weeks ago, it is now flowering. Is this odd when it also has red berries?

Last photo goes to a pretty little Saxifraga which I bought when we were in B&Q getting some paint. I do enjoy rummaging around the plant section there, it’s usually reasonably priced. It’s in a pot with some of my solar lights. I don’t have a garden path for these lights to adorn, which is probably a good thing as they are rather bright and flashy, I wouldn’t want them to confuse the aircraft coming into land at the nearby airport.

The weekend’s job is the put together the new wheelbarrow that I got after a very heavy hint – for Mother’s day. What more could a happy gardener ask for?

Thank you for joining me for this #SixOnSaturday post. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you would like to know more about this hashtag, read founder Mr Propagator’s post here also find him on Twitter here.

Happy gardening

Rosie

Once more I shall add some links to fellow gardening posts. Starting with:

1. Notes from the Under Gardener (Not an SOSer, but still a post that I enjoy each week)
2. Pádraig had a mid-week snippet about the weather from Irish folklore: The Riabhach Days.
3. Cathy has an end of month update on her garden. I love all the nooks and crannies for plants and seating.
4. Lots going on in Pádraig’s garden.
5. My P’s going to have a great Tulip display with all his pots.
6. Fred has some pretty Wallflowers
7. Really pleased to see Viburnum carlesii on Graeme’s blog, it gave me a name for a plant in my own garden.
8. Men’s garden projects for TopDoc.
9. Frosty pictures from Granny’s graden.
10. Ronnie has lots of Wallflowers.
11. Garden jobs and a new Pergola on N20’s plot.
12. The Quilted gardener show us the fern wall.
13. Pauline’s Fritillaria stole the show.
14. Jim has news of a Spring garden show.
15. Harebells and Maples has some hanging basket ideas.
16. Off The Hedge has a mini sink to think about for a new project.
17. Flower arch from Mom In the Garden.