My Rockery

I thought I'd better take a photo of my rockery before the purple/pink heather goes over. This is my favourite corner of the garden. I like the mixture of shapes and colours which I can see from the kitchen window. It looks better from a distance, because I don't often venture up there to weed as I'm not keen on toads/frogs and one always jumps out and gives me a shock!

Visit to Shibdon Pond

Today we walked around Shibdon Pond Nature Reserve. Here are some pictures of the flowers and vegetation

The Goose in the garden...

Look who we found in our garden this morning - Gregory the goose. Andrea (my daughter) is super talented and makes all sorts of things. Usually in the middle of the night, I never know what I'm going to find when I wake up. This morning it was this goose that had taken up residence in my garden, she made him after visiting a lovely fabric crafting shop near to where we live called The Fat Quarters and buying some gorgeous pattern books. Later on today we are going into Newcastle in search of some soft terry towelling fabric to make a lamb - wonder if he'll keep the grass short?

Sunday afternoon walk

On Sunday afternoon we walked in Derwent Park. Andrea took some pictures of the wild flowers we found including dandelion, dog daisy, vetch, cowslips, 'old mans baccy' (that's what we called it when I was a girl) and the most beautiful purple clover. There was a tiny wild forget-me-not and some pink flowers for which I don't have a name yet. The swans were nowhere to be seen, neither was the heron, but we had a lovely walk even though it was very chilly

My garden in May

This is my first attempt at blogging and I will attempt to show different aspects of my small garden as the months pass. It will be interesting for me to compare this year to next, and so on. I have just dug a new border near the patio for my collection of patio roses which have been in pots. My garden slopes (both ways) and is surrounded by a high conifer hedge.

The coniferr patch in the lawn is filled with plants I received for my 35th wedding anniversay last year. I know they'll eventually grow too big, but I don't think I'll be around to worry about that when they do! Here are some photos of different areas of my garden taken yesterday. The Spring flowers are fading now but everything else is coming on really well, especially with the mild winter. The Nicotiana plant which is almost flowering, is a bedding plant from seed grown in 2006 - it has overwintered fine, with flowers, and I wish I hadn't pulled the rest out last Autumn when they were looking the worse for wear! The fuschias flowers are about to open. I put the pots between the shed and the greenhouse over the winter and they've survived!

I love watching the birds and feed them most daysbut on Wednesday a hawk dived into the tall conifer, grabbed a sparrow and that was the end of him ...... only feathers left on the lawn!