There's snow time for snow, its April, we want Spring!

Winter wasn't done with us last week, with snow falling all day on Wednesday, getting heavier as the day went on. I spent the morning doing paper work in the office until lunchtime. By 1pm the snow was starting to lie thickly and I called it a day, closing the nursery. After all who is going to want to come and find plants in the snow!

By lunch time the snow was
much thicker than this

Venturing into the nursery on Thursday I was met with four inches of snow! Fortunately the roads were clear but where it had drifted in the nursery it was up to six inches deep! Meh. I spent a couple of hours in the tunnel potting, weeding, tidying and moving plants to make space for seed trays. There is one thing with all this winter weather, the tunnel looks even tidier and organised this year. I've also started stocking the sales area with alpines and herbs, it's all go despite the weather.

A very snowy Thursday

At least there was blue sky!

Looking along the stock beds

Luckily the temperature over the next few days climbed dramatically to 9C by Saturday, what a difference in a few days. This also meant I could get back to tidying the stock beds and potting new plants to go where I've created space. Half way through S now, progress is slow but looks great once done. It is good to get the new plants out of the tunnel and potted, ready for selling later in the year. These plants have been grown from seed here in the nursery or propagated by cuttings from plants in the nursery gardens. This keeps the stock strong, hardy and organic.

At home there is signs of life too, with spring bulbs finally emerging and the rhubarb putting in an appearance. I always love seeing the Cardamines emerging as they uncurl their flower stems next to the Hellebores.

Rhubarb leaves unfolding at home

Cardamine kitabillii

Chrysosplenium macrophyllum

Eranthus hymalis, the winter aconite

Hellebores are opening now 

Enjoying much more spring-like weather and temperatures at the weekend, David and I made the most of it, getting on with lots of outdoor tasks. I finished top dressing the nursery borders with our own compost and used more to top up the big planters that mark the end of the herb garden. These have purple beech planted in them to create a screen but over time have settled. So a few barrows of compost have rectified the problem and brought the soil level back to where it should be. Because the beech were only planted last summer they were easily removed to allow the soil level to be increased. David did more work on the fence at the nursery entrance and all sorts of wee jobs that help the nursery tick along and look good. I spent most of Sunday in the stock beds, enjoying working in some sun and warmth. I also got the first bed finished, always good to end a week at a defining point. 

Getting there with the stock beds

Now I really feel I am catching up and I hope that if the weather behaves through the rest of April I will be caught up and where I should be in the gardens and nursery after our extra long winter. Monday was sunny and warm so after spending a couple of hours working in the tunnel I grabbed a bulk back and lifted all the willow off-cuts from the wild life garden. These were all the bits I removed when I wove the willow in winter. HEaving them up to the top terrace in a big bulk bag has to be good excersise lol. I swept the path bottle edges, removing leaves and winter debris, raking the path and removing the worst of the grass tops and old plant growth from last year. This gave the wild life gardens a quick tidy up for spring. We are hoping to spend time this year finally finishing off this garden. No big grand wedding gardens this year will give us time to finish off some projects already underway for some time. Watch this space as they say for a bee border, butterfly border, wild life pond and a bird border.

Before tidying! The bottle edges have proved a real hit with customers and are a great way of recycling and creating a novel and quirky path edge and of course was free

After dinner on Monday we headed south to York to visit David's mum and help her sort out more things in the house, ready for moving. It was a bit of a whirl wind 24 hour visit but we achieved a lot and it was good to spend time with Sylvia. Trips to the tip and charity shop helped clear our feet too. With a car full of things we were back home late on Tuesday night with no problems and ready to start another working week, whew!

Great light on the hills as we drove past Abington on the way south on Monday evening

Love the light and dark of this photo

Reflected sunset on the A66

A sunset photo seems a fitting place to finish this post, I hope you are all getting on in your gardens and enjoying some spring weather at last.

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