Rediscovered delights of the garden in spring

Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) in the garden

I cannot avoid mentioning real life now. I dare say most of us are in some kind of lockdown as the Covid-19 Coronavirus spreads in the UK. It all seems so surreal and here in Cardiff it still does not feel that close, although it must be out there somewhere, prowling the city streets and the supermarket shelves.

It looks like I am one of the lucky ones, working busily from home for the council Highways department, with laptop and mobile phone. It has been a week now and the novelty has not yet worn off.

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New plants and old in the garden

Heuchera ‘Marmalade’

When we lost a huge ash tree in a storm last autumn (see here) it meant we also had to remove a a few big shrubs in order to clear away the tree’s remains. This left some open spaces so we took the opportunity in spring to plant a few new perennials to fill the gaps.

I have been taking snaps of these – and a few older flowers, over the last month or so, and here they are…

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Tiny ruby roses of autumn

New shoots of willowherb among the roots

I eventually decided to pull up the willowherb and enchanter’s nightshade that were seeding all over the gravel bed in the garden and was taken by the tiny red growth starting among the exposed roots of the willowherb, like little ruby roses.

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Spotting young birds in the garden

Juvenile great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)

In May and June there have been plenty of baby birds in the garden and I have been trying to capture them. Mostly I have been disappointed. My pictures are rubbish, really. But I felt I wanted to share them just to prove the variety of species we have breeding in our backyard.

The first spot of the year was

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The garden in March

Black cat in the garden, looking suspicious…

The month of March in the garden is a time of change as we step from Winter into Spring. But I have been out and about in city parks so much lately that I haven’t really done justice to pictures of my own scruffy wildlife garden. But here is my record of the month.

I started with a cat partly because,

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Death and new life in the mid-March garden

Magpie (Pica pica) eating a mouse, perched on an ash tree in the garden

Spring is coming to my garden but as well as the usual new life bursting out all over the place, there are some losses, too.

I think the blackbirds are nesting outside my window – I saw a female taking a beakful of grass into a spiky Mahonia bush. But I fear it won’t give enough protection, as the magpies and crows are already

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Signs of spring between the storms…

Cherry blossom sprouting on a roadside tree

After months of rain and gales, with floods and falling trees, this week has been comparatively calm in Wales. Winter probably hasn’t finished with us yet, but at last there have been real signs of spring.

I noticed catkins and cherry blossom on roadside trees as I was walking home in the dusk the other night, so took my camera with me next morning. They must have

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