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| Wallflowers |
Everything is growing, even though spring is generally a little later here, including the ground elder. It's a pest, but you've got to admire it as a successful plant. Seemingly the Romans introduced it because the roots are edible. In fact I've even seen it for sale on some plant lists. (Hint - don't do it.) I haven't tried it myself, but it smells very nice.
It trails along under the ground, and if you leave even the tiniest bit behind, as I'm afraid I do, off it goes again. It has quite pretty flowers though, so there are parts of the garden where I'm only slightly ashamed to say that I just leave it alone. Once or twice, people have even asked me what it is!
Not only is the garden alive with birds, but the bumblebees are out too, I notice. We have lots of them in our garden, with plenty of early flowers between us and the neighbours to keep them happy, and clearly they are also of various kinds. I don't know enough to know which, but I love them. Some of them seem to nest among stones, but you can also find them nesting in compost heaps, and one year, they were in an untidy little heap of grass and leaves on a shed floor. Leave them alone, because they move on from year to year - and they will do your garden a whole lot of good. Greatly to be encouraged.
Finally for today - a little bit of advice. If you are pruning and cutting or even weeding among - for example - roses - then do wear very strong gloves. I'm wearing double gloves at the moment: a finer pair and then a pair of quite strong gauntlets over them. I admit that in previous years I haven't always followed my own advice, but one year my husband had six operations after a small insect bite on his finger - probably a horsefly. Rose thorns can also be dangerous. And in the current overstretched health situation, although gardening is excellent exercise, you need to try hard not to risk accidents.
Safe gardening and have as good a week as you can possibly manage.
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