mandalas

BUSY TIMES DURING LOCKDOWN

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These tulips have been flowering for well over a week and are still doing great, and very beautiful.
This year I decided to grow some more potatoes as last season it was such fun to harvest them with my grandchildren, and besides my inner child wants to dig them up too 🙂
We have had some lovely days and then it is our delight to have our lunch in the garden, very healthy too now that we need extra vitamin D for our immune system. We are both under strict total lockdown which means that we cannot leave the front door at all, so our garden is the only place where we can get fresh air and sunshine, and we are grateful to have such.
  • Two year old cut and come back celery, and a fine feverfew plant
  • Broad beans
  • Broad bean flowers
Already the herbs and some of the broad beans are doing great. And there are lots of little seedlings that are almost ready to go into the raised beds.
  • Bumblebee nest hole
  • Bumblebee rescue
So I accidentally came across a bumblebee crawling into a hole in the decaying timber that surrounds the raised beds. I’ll keep my eye on that, exciting, I read recently that the first bumblebees that fly around early in spring are the queens which are looking to make a nest which can give home to up to 500 bumblebees. I have seen perhaps more than usual number of bumblebees in our garden this spring. Perhaps it is because last summer I let the whole garden grow wild with lots of flowers. This season I will be growing more vegetables again.
  • Flower of life
Meanwhile and on the less pleasant weather days I am enjoying a bit of mandala drawing and painting, a work that is relaxing and enjoyable.
  • Helleborus
  • Camellia
  • Forget-me-nots
As well as all that I noted in my nature diary that the garden is full of brightly flowering dandelions and white three-cornered leeks flowers. Even the kaffir lilies have started to flower as well as the many primroses and pink oxalis flowers. I have a trailing rosemary bush that is bursting with pale blue and purple flowers, it is brilliant. The forsythia and the tulips have been giving us much joy too as do the forget-me-nots and the camellias. The hellebores and grape hyacinths are now almost finished and ready for a rest until next spring. This year I planted gladiola, that’s something new for me. I am also hoping that the irises, freesia’s and the agapanthus which I planted last season are going to flower again. Every year I like to grow something new, it is interesting.
As far as birds are concerned this spring there is something to tell ~ also from our garden ~ we have a resident wren that sings his heart out day after day and it’s such a joy to listen to his song. There are a black bird pair that are building a nest in the uncut hedge, the song of the blackbird has travelled with me right through my life and I can say that it has been a constant joy. Robin and black cap males also give us regular sessions of song, and to top it all I have heard the cuckoo a few days ago from our front garden, something I did not experience for many years.
Finally and to end this blog on my experiences in the garden during the lockdown and on this fine Easter day while I miss my daughter, son-in-law and my grandchildren I can only wish you all to stay safe and keep well. Happy Easter!