Summertime at last .......

We've had some glorious sunshine, really warm (we could actually eat our evening meal on the patio!!) and everything in the garden is bursting with fresh colour. Remember my first attempt at making compost in a huge plastic bin? - well, it works a treat. To-day I have shovelled 4 wheelbarrows of dark, crumbly compost - I am so pleased! I will continue to add my veg and garden waste and will look forward to more free compost at the end of the year!! I have taken some photos and here they are

A cute little Ladybird - hope she eats all the greenflyBluebells
The Alpine clematis is now in full bloom - very pretty
The cherry tree near the deck - a bumper crop of blossom
My beautiful, brown compost

The little Acer I rescued from the pot at the end of last Summer obviously enjoys living in this little bed!
Up by the deck, all the trees are in full leaf
Isn't this azelea beautiful? I got a white one at the same time, a birthday gift a couple of years ago, but it never flowers. I moved it to another part of the garden last year, but still I have only leaves - no flowers
My 'free' foreget-me-nots - they come up every year without any help from me
The rockery - isn't this Acer stunning next to the new bright green growth on the conifer?

Even in a well loved garden - Dandelions flourish!!!!

colour on a grey, damp Sunday afternoon

The alpine clematis on the fence is dripping with fat blue flower buds - gorgeous. It's a bit chilly to 'garden' even though hubby has gone off this afternoon to Durham for the first cricket match of the season - warmly wrapped! I snipped off the dead daffodils and admired all the new growth - even the hostas are peeping out. Due to rain, rain and more rain since the last time I blogged, the grass is looking a bit sorry for itself, but amazingly, the little Acer which I thought was dead at the end of last Summer is covered in buds/leaves, good job I didn't bin it!! On a different subject, we're looking forward to Tuesday evenings for the next ten weeks, because J John is coming to a huge tent which has been erected at the Flower Festival site behind Emmanual College, Lobley Hill (it holds 8,000 people) for a series of talks on the Ten Commandments. If you're interested please take a look at Hillside Church web site by clicking on their link further down the right hand side. If you want to go but don't want to go in on your own, let me know and we'll meet you at the Hillside church 'meeting point' at Lobley Hill

I wonder how long the Hosta shoots will last until the slugs gobble them up?

Small flowered clematis dripping with blooms

Good old pansies - still flowering, better than ever!
The Aubretia really brightens up underneath the tall conifer. I grew these from seeds three years ago and they've been excellent value for money
Last year's wallflowers are blooming well, but they're a bit straggly so they'll have to come out and go to the compost bin when they're finished. Talking of compost, I lifted the lid on my compost bin to put the daffodil prunings in, and inside was crawling with ants - oh dear! One day soon, I have to be brave, get a spade and take out the bottom layer!! As you know, creepy crawlies and me don't get on very well. I'll have to wear gloves, tuck my trousers in my socks and use a very long handled spade in case something yukky crawls out. This is my first time composting in one of these bins with a trap door in the bottom, but I am hoping for something resembling compost when I eventually get around to emptying the bin.

Yesterday I made twenty small pink sugar roses which will become part of flower sprays for a three tier wedding cake. Andrea was taking photographs of them, sadly this is the only photograph she managed to take because just after this she knocked the whole lot over and I thought it was best to rescue a whole mornings work before she smashed them all!!!

April (snow) showers

Was it only a few days ago that I was cutting the grass because the weather was so warm and dry and the leaves were budding on the trees? Well, that all changed today, it has snowed all afternoon and forecast for minus 1 tonight! Here are a few pictures of the snow

Spring flowers during March

These photographs were put in a draft on 10th March, and here we are on 3rd April and I'm just getting around to publishing them on my blog! British Summer Time began last Sunday and the clocks went forward one hour - my body hasn't adjusted yet and when I get up at 6am it still feels like 5 am! March has flown past and I haven't done any blogging - sorry! Here are some photos of the spring flowers in the back garden - I like the miniature types and once the flowers have gone over, I can't wait to chop off the leaves - even though I know I should leave them till they die back themselves! This week we've cut the grass back and front, I've weeded the borders and trimmed the edges in the back garden and made a start on the front garden. It took ages to rake up all the leaves and general debris of winter, but it's great to see the shrubs and the trees starting to bud. I'm sad to say that a few perennial plants don't look as if they have survived the winter, maybe the odd severe frost has killed them off. The back garden gets more sunshine, so everything is much more advanced, for example, there are flower buds on all of the clematis - let's wait and see if they survive the snow showers that the Met Office have predicted for the coming weekend.A beautiful Spring day - wall to wall sunshine and blue, blue sky

Beautiful deep pink tulips in my tubs - they look red in the photo, but honestly, they are very dark pink. Andrea's favourite flowers.

We've had some very nice sunny, mild days and also some very stormy, windy, wet and freezing cold days - from one extreme to another. Flowers blooming are winter pansies, various colours of primroses, wallflowers, daffodils, tulips, aubretia and even the odd flower on the patio roses.

......... on a cold and frosty morning!

We've enjoyed some beautifully sunny days with clear blue skies, but the overnight frosts have been very thick - but very pretty. These are photographs taken during the past week are of plants in my garden, early morning before the sun melted the frost.

Frost so thick, it almost looks like snow

Isn't he cute? This little squirrel was photographed in the rose garden in Saltwell Park, Gateshead - it helped that other visitors were encouraging their grandchildren to scatter peanuts to attract the family of squirrels.

Is it Spring?

Blue sky, sunshine, hardly a breeze - and 14 Deg C - it feels like Spring today! I spent an hour yesterday and a couple of hours today tidying up the garden and checking to see what was beginning to grow. In fact, it felt so warm, a bee was having a feast on a pink hyacinth!

Leaves appearing on the clematis by the back door

White Primroses

It's amazing where all of the rubbish comes from!

Pansies still giving plenty of flowers

Small leaves and buds on the pink hydrangea

This little patch seems to be doing OK

The back of the garden

February comes in with a bang .....

As January drew to a close, we have been battered by severe gales and to-day the North East of England suffered heavy and prolonged snowfall. In fact, over towards the West on high ground the news were reporting that motorists were trapped in their cars and had to be rescued, and in several towns and villages primary schools were closed. We have been warned that temperatures will drop to at least minus 5C tonight and snow and slush will freeze, causing more problems!

I am pleased to say that as far as we can see, the only damage we've had has been to the bird feeders which were smashed as they were hurled around the garden - the bird table, wooden benches and chairs etc were blown about the lawn but no tiles have come off the roof. I stayed indoors today and baked bread, teacakes and sticky buns - I would have included a picture of the sticky, spicy, fruited enriched bread goodies, but all of which were demolished by my family before 6.0pm

The heathers in my garden are beginning to colour up beautifully, it won't be long before they are a blaze of colour. Last Sunday we had a fine, sunny but cold day after three days of gale force winds and I took a few photos to show that even with all this bad weather, there are still beautiful things to look at

Pink wallflowers

Wind blowing through the bare trees in a lane near us - honestly, the branches were being lashed by the gale but this is the best photo I got!

Shrub in my garden - notice the fat little buds! Can't remember it's name, sorry

There seems to be an abundance of mole hills near where we live, thankfully, there are none in my garden - yet! I did have a mole in my garden a few years ago, and it caused havoc

Snowdrops in a neighbours gardenSpring is on the way - my daffodils have buds
Even the daisies are popping up in the grass

Despite the atrocious gales, snow and frosts, see how my little yellow patio rose has buds ready to open!

When the weather is bad, I always feel like being in the kitchen and baking - this lemon meringue pie I made on Wednesday was mouthwateringly good, even if I say so myself - there wasn't a scrap left by bedtime - whatever happened to our new year diet?

Rain at breakfast, snow by lunchtime .....

It started off very wet this morning, but by lunchtime it poured with snow. I work at river level, but live on high ground - my lovely hubby managed to collect me at lunchtime but it took ages to get home as we got higher and higher! Traffic everywhere as Dunston Bank and Whickham Bank were closed due to the snow. Its forecast for minus 3 tonight, so if this lot doesn't turn back to rain and melt away, we're going to have a jolly old time getting to work in the morning! It's a long time since I've seen a snow plough clearing the roads, but we passed two on the way home from work. Here are a couple of photos of the garden, plus a very nice pigeon with a white tail who visited the bird table at the weekend. If anyone knows what kind of pigeon this is, please leave a comment.