Winter colour and birds

lovely to see the nuthatch, the starlings are amazing!

Those starlings are amazing! And your garden has those elegant touches of colour to cheer you into spring. The irises and the viburnum are especially lovely in your photos.

I adore starlings when they swarm and loop in the sky, its a wonderful sight. I love your wet hellebore! Lovely blog Stera.

Lovely pics,Steragram..and the nuthatch is so nice..well caught..:o) We used to watch flocks of Starlings when we lived on the west coast of Cumbria..I agree,an amazing sight..We only ever see the odd one here ..such a shame.
love your Heathers :o).

Brilliant! :))

Lovely pics Stera, good one of the Nuthatch I`venever seen one here and all those starlings, gosh if you hadn`t said I would have thought they were leaves in the first pic, we have a lot so I know how noisy they can be at times, it must be very hard to compete with them near you.
Your heathers are lovely, I do like to see them and your other colours are well worth having, even more so if its in a shady spot...

Nice to see the late winter plants, especially those heathers. Those starlings were amazing. I've never seen so many.

It was nice to see your little bit of colour! You have far more than I have on my balcony! At least the Crocuses are blooming now as well as a couple of Hyacinths & some Snowdrops. In the next few days I will have some Daffs flowering as well.

Even so my winter/early spring display has been ruined by an invasion of a tiny aphids that covered every available millimetre on my poor Pansies & Violas, not a single plant has survived the onslaught! ;-((

Oh Balcony, what a shame - so disappointing. But you might still be able to buy some already in flower to replace some of them, and there are still lots of primroses on sale. Some of my snowdrops are going over now but there are lots of wild ones around. My usual display of many daffodils on the wild bank has been very poor - someone suggested it was because of the dry spring last year. There should be hundreds but nothing like it. Am a bit worried about the anemone blanda too - only one very poor one in flower so far, but its early days for them.

Thanks, Steragram, it is disappointing all right! I was looking forward to a great display as well. You are right there are indeed lots of plants on sale at present - only I can't afford to buy them! Being out of work for the last 3 years means that there are lots of things I can no longer buy & we have to spread my wife's income, from her part-time job, & the supplement I get to make up our income, to what the government considers to be the minimum for 2 people, as much as we can.

Shame your Daffs are doing as well this year as previous years. Perhaps the warm autumn/winter may have had some influence as well. One thing I've noticed is that Daffs began flowering much sooner this year towards the North of the UK than to the South. Here, in Huntingdon, East Anglia, Daffs have only really started showing their heads during this last week or so. There have been a few isolated blooms here & there but only now is their flowering season getting underway!

In the next village to us there are some daffs planted on the verge which normally come out in December but this year they appeared in November - totally ridiculous!

So sorry about your cash flow problem. I'm sure there are lots of folk on here who will be able to send you stuff when available if you make your needs known. I will try to remember you if I have surplus seedlings later on. Perhaps some long season perennial geraniums would fill a trough or two. Don't hesitate to ask for what you need. The only long flowering ones I have that are big enough to split are large thugs or I would send you some. Did your fuchsias survive the winter?

Thanks very much for your offer of surplus seedlings, I appreciate your kind offer.

It seems my Fuchsias did indeed survive the winter but then it has been a fairly mild one. I only brought in the more "tender"plants when we had that spell of terribly cold weather during February.

I have "tons" of seeds for the allotment, so many packets I don't know what to do with them! A few are flowers & I can use some of them on our balcony.

I will be growing a few tomato plants on our balcony as I do every year. This year I'm going to plant some cherry Tomatoes, like 'Gardeners' Delight'. Then our grandchildren can pick them!

Joly good. GD is a lovely tomato.

Just today I sowed 3 different varieties of F1 tomatoes I got in a swap with a gardener on another forum. I sowed them all in the same seedtray, as there were so few seeds of each, then I put them in the propagator. We'll see how they do! I'm adding a photo of them to my photos page if you are interested.

Couldn't see the photo, but enjoyed the thread about strawberries!

I never said thank you for your comments folks - all much appreciated

The Tomato seeds I mentioned above germinated in just 4 days! I posted a photo of the germinated seeds on my Photos page.

Its amazing how germination time vary so much isn't it. some appear in a few days and others take weeks! Hope they live up to expectaions.