Spring 2013

Wow what a wonderful show I am quite envious hope you enjoyed your days away but isn't nice to come home !!

Beautiful Selection,Cinnamon Snow is a beauty,
wish the Iris Recticulata would last more than one year with me.but they won't.

Very pretty love Pauline, like the darker ones best, but they are all so pretty. Glad you had a nice break, good to be back home :O)

That tulip foliage is certainly spectacular!

What a lovely surprise to come home to all this colour! Our garden still seems to be asleep, with just a few snowdrops and crocuses popping up! I think it must be too cold for them! I really enjoyed seeing all this! Thankyou for sharing this with us.

Thank you we had a great time Kidsgran. We packed in a lot including another visit to Bjs and his spectacular garden. You look at his blogs and say how marvellous they are, but to see the textures and smell the delicate scents is quite a different experience.
Bjs I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can keep these reticulata for more than one year. I found this link on the 'net. http://homeguides.sfgate.com/care-potted-harmony-iris-59220.html
I'm going to see if I can follow the instructions to encourage my retics to come again. My Harmony were bought in March 2011. They were growing in a flower pot with the flowers just coming out. I transplanted them in to the raised bed where they seem to be flourishing. I'm very pleased with Cinnamon Snow.
Oliveoil we went down to go to see our grandchildren perform in their school panto mime. It was so good I went again on the Saturday afternoon.
Mel with foliage like that who needs to worry about flowers. Rose we have heather and yellow jasmine and some shrubs in flower too so we are really very lucky.

Scotsgran , what a wonderful array of plants .
My favourite is the gorgeous blue primula .
Glad that you had a good trip , do you drive or take the train ?

Spring has arrived in your garden :o) I love that tulip leaf.

The weather might be miserable but the gardens are brightening up for us, all your flowers look lovely S'gran, my primulas are being nibbled as soon as they come out, all I am left with are the centres, think its the birds, little beggars, I feed them every day so don't know how they dare,
I have the Cinnamon Snow, its now in its second year and has been flowering for weeks for me ....

Driad we drive everywhere as we do such a lot, it would be impossible to use public transport. We did 1200 miles this trip as we went down the west side of England and up the east side. My car likes motorways and so do I. We share the driving although I prefer to drive rather than be a passenger. When OH takes a turn I get out a pillow and sleep till its my turn again. We stop often for coffee. I carry picnics where possible as I'm not keen on motorway services offerings. That is a particularly nice shade of blue primula. Our cyclamen are still flowering Hywel as well as pansies and we have had a relatively cold winter with little snow and the plants seem to ignore it and do their own thing. Linclass the primulas never seem to stop flowering and they are cheery. The birds do go for them but not so much this year. I was lucky to get the hellebores in a shop near my brothers home in South Yorkshire. I always stop as we pass because I get lots of goodies there.

You sound like me, Scotsgran. I also like driving on motorways. I don't much enjoy being a passenger, but I can rarely sleep in the car so I read. We zip up and down to Glasgow regularly, usually returning the same day. When the children were little we would leave at about 4 am if we were going out for the day or going on holiday. They still tease us about it, but we found it was ideal because they would sleep through the longest part of the journey.

4am start would suit me very well Mel but OH likes to go after 9am. He prefers driving in daylight. Now the grandchildren are older we tend to leave about 4pm when bringing them up on holiday. They are usually very contented and if they get tired of singing and playing I spy etc they have dvd players with their favourites on and that sends them to sleep. They wake up when we get home but are easy to tuck up in bed and are soon sound asleep again. They are like all children and wake up at the crack of dawn every day so we tend to go to bed early when they are here. Old age has lots of compensations but staying power is dwindling fast. LOL.

I know the feeling! ;-)