Daffodowndilly

Hello.  Thank you for calling in to my little Shropshire patch.  It feels as if winter is drawing to a close here, it's a bit warmer, the days are longer and we are looking to the spring.  Yesterday, 12th March, my first daffodils opened up so I thought I would take a turn around the garden and look for other signs of burgeoning life.  You see, we can't see the back garden from the house, we have a small yard at the back and then the garden proper is angled away so our view beyond the yard is of...our neighbours' garage!  It's not very picturesque.  It means that our garden has no winter interest as there's no point, we can't see it during the winter unless we go out in it for a purpose, which by and large, we don't. 

 

These crocuses in the old sink in my back yard opened up last weekend; the variety is Pickwick, lovely purple and white stripey petals.  This was snapped during the only moment of sunshine in the whole day. 

 

 

 

Here are the aforementioned daffs.  It was really windy and very difficult to photograph, this is the best I could get, but I really wanted to capture the day.  I LOVE it when the first daffs open up their trumpets of joy.  I always think of this poem, not the obvious Wordsworth but Alan Alexander Milne -

 

Daffodowndilly

 

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
"Winter is dead." 

 

Also in tubs in the back yard are these polyanthus, vivid jewels on a dull day bought very cheaply in Lidl a couple of months ago -

 

 

 

 

Under the hawthorn tree at the end of the yard there are sedums, new, fresh green rosettes

 

 

 

Further into the garden, the forsythia is in bud, bright green promises of gold -

 

 

 

 

and new little columbines, gathering and growing for a May spectacular -

 

 

But AA Milne was wrong, winter isn't dead yet, I'm an astronomical kind of gal rather than a meteorological one and I think that if you recognise the solstices, you also have to recognise the equinoxes and that means that spring begins this year on 20th March.  There's not long to go now but we are still in winter and I found this reminder at the bottom of the woodpile, a sign of death and decay in the fungi which fascinate me -

Now I know this is a bit random, but at the end of my yard there is a wall, just an ordinary, Victorian brick wall.  A few years ago we had some landscaping done in the garden and the builder said to me, "That's a lovely wall."  I was surprised and a bit nonplussed, I had always thought that a wall is a wall, so I looked at it with fresh eyes and found that I agreed with him, it is a lovely wall.  It's behind the hawthorn so it never sees the sun, but I thought you might like to see it.  I know.  I'm a bit bonkers.  I find beauty in old bits of brick wall and fungi.

So thank you for indulging me.  The light was dull, the plants were dancing in the wind and I am not getting to grips with my new camera as quickly as I had hoped, but I have marked the day, Daffodowndilly Day, and I am glad I did because the rain poured out of the sky last night and hasn't stopped yet. 

 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x