Whilst wistfully daydreaming out of the kitchen window, as I am prone to do from time to time, I noticed the red spectre of our favourite little rodent. I am of course, talking about our neighbourhood red squirrel. It seemed to be an adult, not as large as some I’ve seen, but much darker than the very brassy-red youngsters. My guess, from 30 paces, is that this is an adult female. I could be wrong, though!

[someone enjoying a nosh on the peanuts left out for them]

[and again...]

[I'm obviously not as important as the peanuts...]

[A charming tail-shot as it runs for the hills... and my camera lens]

After a few minutes of posing gracefully for the camera, she had enough, and dashed through the trees with such simple efficiency. I could see her gaily bounding into the pine trees immediately behind, one final bound and she was gone.

My new job title: wildlife papparazzi-in-training!

Well, lots and lots. The weather has taken a turn for the better, so I’ve been out in the garden and have, *gasp* mowed our lawn! It was warm enough for that! I have seen two bees today, large bumbles, our first of the season, still sleepily flying into things, like me in the morning ;-) The daffs too, and narcissi are both coming up, the wee nodding heads of the buttercup-yellow narcissi have flowered and are sat out in their trough just like Wordsworth’s poem “I Wondered Lonely As A Cloud”;

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.

Then, last weekend, my mother came up and spent a very pleasant 3 days up here, sampling all that Northumberland has to offer (which included local Jersey-milk cheese, rare-breed middle-white sausages – both from the farmers market – and my own home cooking!), although in all the time she was here there was not one sign of a red squirrel anywhere! The little devils were all sat cosy in their dreys, out of the rain, refusing to be looked-at. Of course, the moment mum was gone, they reappeared at the bottom of the garden, a cheeky brassy-red baby and an older, much larger, deep blood-red male (I think) sat in the hawthorn bush and proceeded to scoff peanuts until he probably had a very sore tummy.

Mum didn’t come empty-handed either (does she ever?!), she brought us a wonderful wardrobe and chest of drawers (from a friend of hers – recycling in action!), these were important as we really don’t have much storage space at all in this house. So part of the weekend was spent assembling those back into their 3D forms, and of course, filling them with stuff. The art room is now much nicer with the addition of the drawers, only a couple of ghastly boxes now! Which has made me feel all the more in the mood to get down and do some arty stuff, yielding one rather nice lino print, and another one in the works, all the while Nag Champa incense was burning, the windows thrown open with wreckless abandon, and the heating turned completely off! This spring malarkey is great, washing is out on the line, it doesn’t get dark until after 7pm, and it’s starting to warm up a bit. This does, however, highlight a problem, which is, I really must get the veg seeds planted, but I seem to be having gardeners-block and not being able to practice what I preach… I do hope for a remedy soon, in the form of some nice sunny days in which to get it all done. Then I will officially be able to claim that it really is the start of Spring and all’s well with the world at last!

The gardener, on the whole, works with the rhythms of nature, in a cycle, and for us gardeners (and members of the Northern Hemisphere) our annual cycle starts right about now. March is the month that things start to really happen in the garden. The lawns grow, trees bud, weeds sprout, bulbs emerge and flower, bird song changes and everything starts to re-animate. In our garden the bulbs are all coming up, some of which I planted myself in the sunny December days we had, things like miniature drumstick alliums and two different types of miniature tulips. The garden came complete with beds full of daffodils, non-native bluebells (I am working on erradicating these) and crocuses, but only when they start to push their spring-green leaves up through the soil can the garden really start to begin its new year.

Spring has come late for us up here, there have been many days of rain, sleet, snow and hail, and still the temperature is much lower than this time last year, when the Fiancé and I spent days on the beach in the warm hazy sunshine. According to our neighbour who has lived on this street (and was born in our house!) all of his life, spring doesn’t get here until around the beginning of April. For others it can be earlier, sometimes up to a month and half earlier if you live near Cornwall, Devon and the south-west. The things that we can start to do in the month of March do really depend on where you live and what time the weather starts to get better. Usually you can expect frosts until the middle of May for most places, but in the south it will be considerably earlier. It is worth watching the weather forecast as the old quote says: “the difference between a good gardener is two weeks”. So from now on, watch the weather like a hawk, consider getting yourself an outside thermometer and become aware of your surroundings.

Seeing as March is typically the ‘new year’ for the garden, it is time to implement the planning from way back in October. You should by now have a good idea of planting arrangements, colour schemes, fruit/vegetable beds (if you’re having them) and of jobs that need to be done in the garden. We dug our beds over at the end of last year, hoed them, and left them mainly fallow to allow the soil and worms to do their job, to open the soil up and give it better structure for the coming year’s plants. I have divided our beds up into specific areas, to allow them to be practically useful, and to allow ease of movement. The aesthetics of the garden are still important too, so when planting I’ll keep everything sympathetic to one another. We have 7 beds in total, and here are my plans for them:

• Top bed, sunny south-facing, gets majority of sun although in one corner it suffers from neighbouring a large hawthorn bush and also an unruly privet hedge. Our compost bins, Elthel (I mean, come on, who doesn’t name their compost bins?! She looks like an Elthel, too!) and Florence, live there, as does the leaf-litter pile. Currently the bed is shared also by the purple-sprouting broccoli, which we have decided is probably not going to flower, although we’ll give it until the beginning of April before we remove it and give up.
• Main veg bed, sunny location, south-facing, gets all the sun. Suffers from a slightly stony soil, which means in order to grow good root vegetables will need a healthy seiving before any seeds can be sown. This is a problem as rain has prevented much work on this level. This bed is split in half, with the other half being devoted to my wonderful herbs. The herb bed doesn’t just house herbs, it has some small hardy shrubs like a bright-red geum ‘Mrs. Bradshaw‘, spirea ‘Gold Flame‘ and many native foxgloves and some wallflowers. It has three lavender plants which will form a scented hedge on the eastern side (bordering the path), fennel, thyme, oregano, tricolour sage, blackcurrant bush and lemon balm. The feel for this will be a cottage-garden, with native British wildflowers, poppies, sweet peas, love-in-a-mist ‘nigella damascena’ and cerynths. But will also retain the practicality for harvesting of the herbs themselves.
• Shady bed, running alongside the vegetable bed with a path inbetween, it neighbours a greedy privet hedge and is quite shaded. This bed will be home to anything that loves shade, or that can attain height. It isn’t shady all of the time, in the morning and early afternoon it will have full sun. The plan for this is a buddleja davidii, a deep purple ‘butterfly bush’, a sweet pale-cream rhododendron and some roses. I’d like to hide some of that privet hedge and keep the interest focused on the main bed, but give some height, shade and colour to the garden in general.
• The bed which isn’t. This is situated at the top of the lawn and through self-seeding before we bought the house reverted back into lawn. It will be another vegetable bed.
• Three semi-circluar beds, one small, one large, one small, in that order down the western side of the lawn. These will be the ’show’ beds, full of annuals, bright flowers, just a mass of colour.

Planning things out like that enables me to be able to look closely, define the aim of the garden, and work with it. I don’t say those plans will be strictly adhered to, but for me it helps greatly. On our wedding list there is a ‘garden obelisk’ and roses, the plan is to have some height in the garden by having an archway bordered either side by trellis, to give the garden some much-needed privacy.

[the top third of our garden as it is today, it looks barren, cold and rickety but when it is planted it'll come into a world of its own!]

In the garden this month:

• Finish planting roses and give established roses their spring pruning.
• Mend lawns, and if you get a dry week with warm temperatures, mow your lawn. Re-cut edges of lawns and re-seed if necessary.
• If you have a bare bed fertilise and prepare it for whatever you plan to grow in it.
• Get your hoe out and start attacking those perennial weeds before they become rampant. It will save many many hours in the summer if you get in there early.
• Scrub paths with a mild detergent and a good strong brush.
• Get your hands dirty – re-pot your potted perennials. If you haven’t done so already, scrub out plastic pots ready for planting seeds (which should also be done now).
• Give some ericaceous fertiliser to your camelia, rhododendron or azealea as it starts to bud. Spent tea-bags, in moderate numbers (there can be too much of a good thing) will give your acid-lovers a boost.
• Give some love to your indoor houseplants. Re-pot if necessary, talk to, water and feed every plant in your house. Wipe leaves to remove dust with either a damp cotton-wool ball or a feather duster if delicate.
• Make friends with your compost heap, get one if you haven’t already, and start saving all of your fruit scraps, vegetable scraps, shredded and soaked newspaper, spent tea-bags and coffee grounds, grass clippings, weeds, any garden waste except woody cuttings. Add an accelerator like Garotta and within a few months you’ll be reaping the rewards of your labours!

Thanks to the most delectable, ever-vivacious Flossy at Amethyst Grove, who gave me the most beautiful fabrics and with the addition of some of my own odds and ends, I patched myself a cushion cover! It took me less than a day’s total time to make, and it looks so bright and spring-like! Fantastic!

Yesterday was a tiring day, but very exciting too. I received two things in the post, one of which was a wonderful fabric bundle from Flossy at Amethyst Grove. Thanks ever so much! I plan to get something quilted done soon, I’m not sure quite what at the moment – but when I get started I’ll let you know!

The second item to (finally) get here was my wedding dress! We had such a kerfuffle trying to find out why it was being held in the local depot (we were tracking it online) and why it hadn’t yet been delivered. Then we found out we were missing a customs charge letter with a magical 18-digit number so that we could pay the charges and have it delivered… But in the end, after many fruitless telephone calls I got through to someone who was very helpful and let me pay. The dress itself is beautiful, much darker than in the photo and a slightly more plummy colour, not so blueish as the one pictured. For now it’s going to be kept a secret, because although I am not one for tradition when it comes to weddings, I would like the Fiancé to have a surprise on the day. Now we still have the mammoth task of flowers, cars, honeymoon, shoes, lingerie, suit for sir etc. This is where the stress really piles on!

For the big day itself I’ll be wearing my grandmothers wedding ring, which means an awful lot to me because it was hers and because it is a little bit of family history. It is a beautiful square-cut platinum ring which you can tell has been worn for many years with love. I’ll also be wearing my grandmothers tiara, a small affair laced with gorgeous pearls, Austrian crystals and the most delicate wax (they didn’t have plastic in those days) lilys. It is beautiful. I know on the day I’ll be feeling like a princess :-)

After yesterdays nervous wait for the dress, which was spent cleaning downstairs as I daren’t go upstairs lest I should miss the delivery man (although his knock on the door was loud enough to raise the dead). Today everywhere is clean, from my usual morning kitchen whip-round to the bathroom, living room and dining room. I say they are all clean, and for the most part tidy, but it does need a good sorting out. At the moment we have two huge compost bins sitting in our dining room looking like the Environmental Sect of Daleks have come to visit. We can’t put them out in the garden just yet as they need to be filled, which will involve an awful lot of moving the current compost heap and re-positioning, filling the bins, avoiding treading on the still-growing purple-sprouting broccoli. All I can say is, at 10 months in the soil, that broccoli had better taste good! I am starting to wonder if they don’t have enough nitrogen in the soil, brassicas being renowned for loving a heavily-fertilised soil. But they are living very close to the compost heap which should be leeching goodness into the soil, so I am at a blank. I think they are one vegetable that will have to be put on hold this year.

So for the rest of the day I am going to come up with something crafty, dust upstairs and down, and look for the blessed digital camera which has taken itself on a walk… somewhere. That’s one thing we could really do with (the little door hiding the CF card is held on tentatively with sellotape!), but I think we’ll have to wait until after the wedding for another!

Have a great weekend Ladies and Gents!