Spring Gardening

Good morning everyone, what a glorious weekend we had just past, the sun was shining and I managed to get a little gardening done. The garden was looking rather over-grown, lots of dead-heading, cutting back and picking up of leaves left over from the autumn. We've had quite a stormy winter this year so the lawn was littered with twigs from the trees.

I realised pretty soon that all this garden refuse was not going to fit into the recycling bin, and my composting bin is already full - probably too full to be of any use (I must check that out!) So what do you do when you have lots of garden refuse and a dry sunny day? Burn it of course - I was actually quite excited about the prospect LOL

So DH dutifully constructed a fire and we burnt the lot. It was a rather smoky affair that seemed to smolder for ages - we reeked afterwards, but the smell reminded me of summer BBQ-ing days - I can't wait!

Last week I was cleaning out the pump in our pond and what do you think I saw? A family - a rather large (in number) family - of newts!

I was super excited to spot them, the girls and I counted about 16! We knew that we had frogs living in our pond but not newts! We will definitely be doing a newt study in our nature lessons soon!

There is no doubt that the northern hemisphere is slowly awakening from her winter slumber. This month I will be sewing seeds for the summer garden. I want to include a cut flower garden this year, I was inspired by last years production of The Big Allotment Challenge - one of my favourite programs. Sadly I believe the BBC are not doing a third series - such a shame!

Anyhoo, I was looking through some of my favourite gardening books and some that are on my wishlist and thought I would share them here with you. Alan Titchmarch and Monty Don are amongst my favourite! Full of practical month-by-month advice which is just what this amateur gardener needs LOL.

I'll leave you to ponder on your own garden dreams, have a wonderful day and I'll see you back here very soon!