The April Garden
Reawakening, revival and a demise
In April The tulips arrived
Last year, I had most of my speciality tulips eaten by some form of hungry rodent
this year I planted every bulb under a blanket of holly leaves - it seems to have worked.
Tulip Salmon van Eijk
Tulip Nachtwacht
The peonies leapt into action
Among the first tulips to appear were Salmon van Eijk.
Then the snow hit
it looked beautiful but hit the plants hard.
The tale of the stricken bee
A bee had been trapped in the greenhouse and looked like it didn’t have long for this earth when I found it.
I took it to the Scilla’s, where I’d previously seen bees ‘like it’ (although my bee identification skills are nothing to write home about) and dripped some sugar water on the petals. Almost immediately the bees tongue came out and it lapped it up. After about ten minutes and giving its legs a wiggle, it did a little dance then flew off - a wonderful moment.
See it all unfold on the ‘Bee rescue’ highlight on my Instagram
la Belle Epoque
one of my favourites
Blackbird Pickles
For the last couple of years we’ve had a blackbird in the garden who was almost like a pet
He followed us wherever we went in the garden (way more than the hopeful opportunists do waiting for a worm after a weeding session); almost sat on Oscar’s paws in his final days and even flew to the end of the lane with my van whenever I drove off. He sat above me in bushes as I gardened underneath, while he sang and chirruped quietly to himself in that ‘Rob Brydon/blackbird trapped in a box’ way. I wonder if he was kind of imprinted on us?
He was at the back door whenever we opened it and sat in the tree outside our bedroom. He taught himself to eat the fat balls from the hanging bird feeder, dangling most unglamorously and he even made it onto my Instagram, including the rather silly video of him ‘show jumping’ down the fence.
his white spot
my last image of him
on our makeshift bird table
(You may be thinking all this is slightly fanciful and was in fact probably several blackbirds, but he was identifiable by a little spot of white on his wing, above, so we always knew it was him.) We never gave him a name, he was just ‘the blackbird’ and he followed us both around equally.
There were other pairs of blackbirds nesting around the garden and they all seemed to grudgingly tolerate each other, I suspect they were all from the same family. However, I think it must have been too crowded once all their chicks were larger and there were sporadic blackbird fights. I came out one morning last week to find our dear, beautiful, friendly blackbird dead by the fence, with his white spot clearly visible.
We’ve both felt surprisingly sad, I know it’s ‘nature’ but he did feel a little like a pet and I miss him continually sitting with me as I garden.
I hope we find another ‘Blackbird Pickles’ but I suspect we won’t. (shameless reference to Penguin Bloom)
The wildlife continues to be plentiful and delightful despite the sad loss.
Deer gather in the field almost every morning (to the whippets’ frustration) and birds are nesting in every bush, nook and cranny.
And the garden continues to explode at an alarming rate.
Tulip greigii ‘Quebec’
took on a beautiful pink tinge after the frosts and snow.
Maybe you have an image of me Snow White-like, with bluebirds fluttering around my head and rabbits scampering at my feet?
Replace that image instead with trousers tucked into socks to stop red ants climbing into them (nobody wants ants in their pants); almost broken fingers after a bizarre rose-impaling incident; falling down stone steps, weeks scrabbling on hands and knees vainly trying to eradicate the ever present dandelions-in-the-cobble-sets-problem and epsom salt baths every night to ease the aching bones.
Just another wonderful month in the garden and I adore it.
