enter the magnolia

Do you remember this photo I showed you in March of the snowdrops in my garden, 

Well look what's happened.  Enter the magnolia!  The warm weather yesterday brought the first flowers out.

I'm actually not that good at what the gardening books call 'year-round interest', but in this case nature does all the work for me!  My kind of gardening!

I wandered lonely

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

Written 1804

England's most popular poem

photo 1 here  2 here

when I grow up - my garden

One day, when I grow up, I will have a perfect garden, where everything is so incredibly perfect and beautiful that I will never muddy my shoes or dirty my fingernails.

 

I will float around, effortlessly finding the time to make ecologically friendly pots for my seedlings

 

My 'nécessaire de jardin' will be kept to hand in a beautiful belt of various sized pockets

My tools will never get rusty, or bent, and they will never ever  -perish the thought -  accidentally land on the compost heap.

My tomatoes will not know the meaning of the words  blight,  undersized, flavourless or ordinary

my pots will be coordinated to the shades of flowers in season which will in turn be coordinated to current fashion

and I will carry a secateur in a perfect gardening bag in case the worst happens and  I come across a stray branch

One day!

photos  garden, potting tool, garden equipment

Snowdrops in my garden

My friend Martha kindly asked for pictures of the daffodils or jonquils in our garden, and in a month or so I'll be happy to oblige, but first here are the snowdrops.  Our earliest sign that Spring will come.