A pixie, a wizard and a green man

I seem to start every blog this year by apologising for being so absent – this month I have been so busy I didn’t even think I would be able to put together a blog post but I keep taking gardening photos all the time and I managed to film last Friday so here I am again, writing a last minute post.

There is still no news on my bathroom, no work is started but there is hope it might start sometime in May. Yay! I have been allowed to make choises for just about everything if I want to (as opposed to the council just choosing what they think is OK), so I have spent hours and hours on the computer trying to find suitable taps, tiles, flooring, bathroom fan, bathtub, basin....my goodness how much time it takes. I have to keep within reasonable prices, and with companies they shop from – no luxury fixtures I am afraid, but I think it will look very nice once everything is done. Now, if we could just get started?!

At the moment I am looking at paint for one of the walls, the other three will be white tiles with a border. I have an iPhone, an iPad and a Windows computer, the colours look different on all three devices. I had to order paint samples and I paint them on paper plates so I don’t ruin the wall. The colours you see on your computer are probably very different from the actual colours, but they are all dusty plum colours. Eeny meeny....

And the paint samples are for matching my new towels.

This will hopefully be the border on the 3 tiled walls. Can’t wait to see it finished!

OK, some photos from my garden now – and boy does it look different from a month ago. The green leaves on the trees kind of fill the garden and makes it looks smaller and more enclosed.

My waiting room garden bench seems to never be empty of patients to attend to, I hope to clear this soon so I can sit here.

The Japanese Bed is colourful and the Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’ has got a piece of decoration – can you see him?

He is called ‘Green Man’ – when I found him online I thought of this space straight away :-)

There are some new occupants in my Woodland Bed too.

A wizard, a pixie and a frog. They look a bit too ‘new’ still, but will weather with time.

Back in the Japanese Bed, the new Acer palmatum 'Pink Passion' is just as gorgeous as I imagined.

Just look at these leaves!

My 4 year old Acer palmatum ‘Ariadne’ is pretty good on gorgeous leaves too, starting with pink, turning to orange, then green in the summer and flaming yellow and red in the autumn. I love it!

My earliest rhododendrons and azaleas started flowering in January and I have had some in flower ever since. This is Rhododendron 'Princess Anne' and it is at its peak right now.

I have rhododendrons with huge flowers and leaves – like Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Sneezy'....

....tiny flower and leaves, like this dwarf Rhododendron 'Carmen'....

....and this is somewhere in between, Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Doc'. Both ‘Doc’ and ‘Sneezy’ are part of the 7 dwarf series of rhododendrons and you might remember I had ‘Dopey’ in my previous garden – the new tenant there is hopefully enjoying the flowers of it right now.

I still have a few spring flowers left, this is Ornithogalum nutans 'Star of Bethlehem'.

I wish you could smell my dwarf lilac, it has the most exquisite scent! This Korean lilac has a much more fruity scent than Syringa vulgaris.

I have done a lot of work in the garden the last month, this bed has finally been planted. Give it 3-4 months and it will be filled with flowers.

The front garden has also finally been planted, in the ground are roses and penstemons.

And the small square bed in my Woodland area has been dug up and replanted. I have filled it with a few lilies in the middle and hemerocallis’ – probably too many but I just had so many in pots that was languishing in my pot jungle so I stuffed in as many as I could manage to fit.

The lilies are growing tall already (must start to stake soon!) and the foxgloves are already flowering. Are they not supposed to flower in June? It’s April - and it’s been a chilly April!

I grew these from seed last year and they are the only foxgloves I had. The seed packet says Digitalis purpurea 'Camelot Cream' – but these look peach to me. Not the first ones to come out wrong from Sarah Raven for me.

I have got a nice collection of Dicentra by now, this is Dicentra spectabilis 'Valentine' – or Lamprocapnos to be correct, I can never remember that word!

And this is one of my new ones, Dicentra cucullaria ‘Pink Punk’ – and this is actually a dicentra. I got some dicentras sent me from a fellow blogger last year and I love the unusual flowers on them. Thanks Roger, they are all doing well :-)

I might have planted over a hundred plants the last month, but there are still pots everywhere – they seem to have a unique ability to multiply. And there are pots of seedlings everywhere too, those the squirrels haven’t ruined already.

I got some new magnolias last year and I had no idea they would flower so soon. These photos were taken last week when they still were looking gorgeous – but the smell is out of this world! I finally have magnolias with scent!! These are pretty unique as they can be pruned as much as you like, they flower on new growth and can even be grown as a hedge. I have 4 plants and I am not sure yet what I will do with them, they are still small and I might grow two as a tall standards.

My tulips are early and all have finished by now, these photos were also taken last week of the latest ones, ‘Shirley’.

Lunaria is a new one for me, a plant I got in a swap, it is a biannual so unless it self-seeds it will be a one-off. But it has lovely flowers and leaves so I might get it again.

The first alstroemeria flowers are here, many more to come!

The first lavender flowers are here, also many more to come. This one is aptly named ‘Fat Head’.

And the first roses are here! As usual it is the pot roses that flowers first, but all the roses have buds not far from opening - a bit warmer weather and they will all burst open.

These pot roses don’t come with labels so I don’t have any names.

The last photos from the garden were taken a couple of weeks ago when the big cherry tree was in full flower.

I just thought it looked so lovely against the sunset so had to include them.

And finally – do you remember I used some of the plums from my tree to make plum liqueur last autumn? Well, the liqueur is now bottled....

....and labelled....

....and even got screw cork and bottle tops like the wine bottles you buy in shops. The liqueur needs to mature for another 6-8 months or so and will be ready for Christmas. I don’t really know what it will taste like when it’s ready, but I had a little taste when I bottled them and it was very yummy already now :-)

The garden movie today has music from the BBC TV series Poldark so if you are impatiently waiting for series 3 like me, maybe this piece of music will help a bit – accompanied by my garden from a few days ago....and the green man, the wizard and the pixie are all here. By the way, the pixie is not a gnome, elf, fairy or nisse or anything else – he is a pixie, Wikipediea will help to explain :-)

See you next month, take care.