Signs of Spring?

Snowdrops

If you're looking for an investment opportunity, here's a tip: Radox.  Buy shares in the soothing soak now, because it looks like I'm going to be needing industrial quantities of the stuff over the next few weeks.

At home, our garden is looking shockingly shipwrecked after the recent snow and weeks of neglect prior to that.  It's not exactly a great advert if any prospective clients walk past, though at least the Google Earth guys came by during the spring when the front garden was at its prettiest, so virtual visitors get a good impression! 

My excuse is that I don't disturb it during the winter because I don't want to unsettle or expose any hibernating garden friends like toads and ladybirds - there are usually some of the latter snuggled up in the crispy brown remnants of the crocosmia leaves.  But the downside of this strategy is that the slugs and snails also get an amnesty.  So I'll need to make a start before too much longer or the molluscs will steal a march on me.

I've also been pleasantly surprised to get a long-term project just over the border in Cheshire which involves the tidying and on-going maintenance of a large front garden.  Not only is my employer extremely pleasant, being generous with tea and certainly not the sort to quote stories from the Daily Mail at me (indeed, I suspect she wouldn't even sully her wellies with it), the garden itself seems to occupy a time zone several weeks further into spring than my own.  Perhaps it's the gorgeous sandy but humus-rich soil, perhaps the lower altitude, but the snowdrops are all in full bloom and there are primroses and crocus popping up all over the place and even an azalea on the brink of bursting into flower.  I also have the delightful company of a pair of bug-hunting robins as I turn over the soil and, despite their fierce reputation, these seem happy to tolerate the company of a wren who's almost as tame.  The robins do a particularly cute line in fork-handle perching, though probably only because they know I can't photograph them with my gardening gloves on!

There have been some tough battles with over-enthusiastic ground-cover ivy this week, but the worst of that seems to be behind us now.  But I'm not taking any chances; my vertebrae need some TLC, so its bathtime!