Early Forage

Over the past couple of weeks there has been some milder sunny weather enabling the bees to get out and stretch their wings. At the weekend we watched with interest as the bees obviously began to bring little packages of pollen to the hive!


 There was pale yellow and a greenish colour which I think must be from the hazel catkins in the garden.We have tried to plant up the garden to be bee friendly and there are clumps of snowdrops in flower ready to release their nectar and pollen, hazel with catkins full of pollen as well as Viburnum Bodantense and Sarcococca Confusa to hopefully attract the bees for an early feed. Trev managed to capture this bee on the Viburnum on Wednesday.

Better Weather

It's been a busy time over the past month with visiting family and work done in the house and garden- tidying and getting ready for the spring-my favourite time of year in the garden.

The flowers I most look forward to are snowdrops- I just love the clear green and white shoots as they push up through the earth, gradually droop over and open up against the dark ground. Over the years I have tried to collect different varieties and the glossy or matt blue green leaves are as attractive as the flowers. It was with great interest that I watched Carole Klein in her delightful garden explaining how to propagate snowdrops en masse. The method- called twin scaling -involves cutting bulbs into slices, each containing a piece of the basal plate and placing them into vermiculite until they start to grow tiny bulbils. These can then be grown on to flowering size in a couple of years. When my bulbs have finished flowering this year I hope to give this a try!