Dear Readers, the lovely young man who has been helping me out in the garden made his last visit today (you can find him here) and true to form I’d bought enough plants for a garden twice the size. First up were some cyclamen from my friend M’s garden – M used to live in our house back in the 70s, and actually planted the whitebeam tree, which was a tiny sapling then and is now nearly as tall as the house (or was until the tree surgeons were in a few months ago). The cyclamen are now nice and cosy, and I look forward to seeing them in flower at some point soon (the one above is the only other cyclamen that I have!)

Wood anemone (Anemone blanda)

We’ve planted up some wood anemones, to replace the ones that seem to have gone awol over the past few years…

Snakeshead fritillaries

And we’ve popped in some snakeshead fritillaries, some of my very favourite bulbs, and a good choice for a damp, north-facing garden…

Grape hyacinths

And I’ve bought way too many grape hyacinths, some blue, some white, some in the middle….

What happened to my crocuses last time

And I’ve even risked some crocuses, though the squirrels had great fun with them last time.

The biggest excitement, though, is using some woodland and hedgerow seed mix for the first time – goodness only knows what will come up, but we’ve used it along the gap between the houses, and scattered it around generally, so fingers crossed!

One of the big lessons of the past few months has been that it’s ok to ask for help – breaking one’s leg made me realise that I really can’t do everything on my own, nor should I. I am really excited about the garden and about what might happen over the next few months, and I am so excited to have someone to partner with me to create it. Let’s see what happens!