Hello spring, goodbye winter

Firstly, I must say that this post was started earlier on in the week as a draft, but I have been very busy over the last few days. This time, not with exams, as I don't have any for a while now, but with my 15th birthday last Monday, Mothers Day today, and a folk music festival outing all of yesterday, I have not really had the time to post recently. I must also apologise for my slow replies to comments. However, I have been accumulating photos for this post for a while now. Here goes...

I think we can officially say farewell to winter in our garden. It was been a week or 2 of change amongst our garden plants and animals, and most have already got their spring caps on. I do love the look of our spring garden, with the blossom on the trees, flowers coming out, and birds singing their spring song. The blossom on the trees has got to be my favourite part of the winter-spring transition, and our apricot tree is now completely white with the stuff.

Blossom covers the branches and stands out in the garden. Its sometimes difficult to spot the birds in the dense blossom, especially the Blue Tits. The fat feeder put in there in February is completely lost from view!


The blossom forms in clusters on the thin branches of the tree.


The colour of the blossom is quite amazing. The bees are definitely attracted to it and have been seen in large numbers on flowers like the one below.


Blossom is still emerging on the more shaded side of the tree, but will not take long to come out with the fantastic weather we have had over the last week or so.


Some of the leaves are starting to come out on our apricot tree too, and I am sure it won't be long until the tree turns from white to green. We have found that our pet rabbits love to eat these leaves, so once they have all grown fully, we will definitely pick a few for them. Once the tree is covered in trees, it really is hard to see the birds in the tree, especially the Greenfinches! The leaves make the tree look bigger and, come the summer, the apricot tree will be a fairly large tree, about 9-10 years after it was planted.

The slow worm is maybe not necessarily an animal associated with spring but I saw it today under our sand pit, so I thought I would take a picture and inculde it in this post. Whilst the slow worm isn't a "springy" animal, it reminded me that the lizards will start to become seen again in the early summer. They are such strange animals, as I noticed when I watched it. I think a look in the compost heap would reveal more slow worms, and maybe some other creatures too.

Recently, my dad bought 2 young apple trees which have already been planted in the garden in 2 different places. There is something very pleasing about planting a tree, especially if you get to see it grow, like I have done with the apricot tree. We do already have an apple tree at the end of our garden, and it has been very good for the birds recently, as we have a feeder hanging off one of its branches. I wonder how long it will take for the new trees to grow to the size of the older apple tree.

Maybe the fork in the apple tree branch seen below will be a possible nesting site in the future when the tree is fully grown?

Whilst I was outside in the sun this afternoon, I noticed that the Rhubarb plant in our garden is growing very fast. Last year, it grew so big that it covered the path to the right of it. Hopefully, some of it will get eaten before it happens again this year. The underside of the large leaves provide a good habitat for some of our garden insects. It may be a while until we see those yet though.

I can imagine that some of the northern England and Scottish gardens may be behind in the winter-spring change, but I am sure it won't be long. Unfortunately, our Blue Tit pair have chosen our conservatory nestbox instead of our camera nestbox this year :-( I had a quick peek in the nestbox today (without disturbing the birds) to see a nearly complete nest. Some of the flowers in my wildlife patch are now starting to emerge, and I may post on that soon. But for now, I wish you all a happy spring- at last!

Spot the spring blossom

Here I am posting on 1st March 09 and our suburban garden is showing some definite signs that spring is here. Apparently spring "officially" starts on 21st March. Most years this is roughly true, although it seems to be coming earlier and earlier each year. I don't think that the date of 21st March is particularly accurate as the transition between winter and spring is gradual. But as far as I can tell, the long winter is over and spring is beginning!

The best way of telling if spring is underway in our garden is the blossom on our apricot tree. At the moment, the blossom is just coming out and soon, the tree will look very white and very fluffy. So far, the tree still looks quite bare, but the pictures below show that the tree is just starting to reveal its colours. It shouldn't be too long before the tree has leaves again, and it won't seem long until summer- or am I getting ahead of myself!

The colour of a spring garden is probably my most favourite part of the plant year. The bright white of the blossom really does stand out. I bet many of you are seeing some colour changes in your gardens too. Maybe not on a tree but in some early flowers, you will be sure to find some interesting colous at this time of year.

The close up picture of the blossom directly above has got to be my favourite. Its often not until you get a close up view like that that you notice the other colours in just one twig of blossom. The reds and greens, browns and pinks are shown too. Some even brighter colour are shown in other flowers in the garden at the moment, notably the Jasmine flower below. They definitely brighten up the shady area of the garden. Hopefully the bees talked about in my last posting will like these flowers too.

The birds are acting very "springy", and many of them are already paired up for the breeding season ahead. As far as I can tell, we seem to have a pair of Robins, Dunnocks, Great Tits and of course the Blue Tits which are currently visiting our camera nestbox. Also seen this morning was an extremely fast chase involving 2 male Greenfinches, possibly fighting over a female or a territory.

The Song Thrush is still visiting the garden, and a quick visit from 2 Long-tailed tits (which could also be in a pair) and a Wren tooking for insects under vegetation on the ground. I wonder if the group of around 5 House Sparrows currently visiting the garden at the moment will nest near our garden again this year. Its all very exciting stuff!I reckon that,since I live in Southern England, the spring action will be a little ahead of northern England and Scottish gardens at the moment, but I wonder what you can see on 1st March 09!

All photos taken in my garden on 1st March 09

Garden changes

Our garden is really looking different now to what it did in the summer. It is now mid-November and autumn is well underway. I like to see autumn as the time when the garden is preparing itself for a potentially cold winter to come. Our garden is definately showing signs of this and I couldn't resist taking pictures of the brilliant colours our garden has to offer at the moment.

One of the most obvious changes is the falling of leaves from the trees in the garden. We have an apple tree and an apricot tree in our garden, and it is very interesting to see the differences in the colours of leaves from these 2 trees. The apricot tree leaves turn a brilliant yellow colour at this time of year, where the apple tree leaves turn a browny-orangy colour. I must say that I prefer the apricot tree for its colour. If only it produced more than about 5 apricots per year in the summer! I took the photos of the apricot tree a week or so ago and now pretty much all the leaves have fallen off now.

The leaves falling off the trees mean that it is a lot easier to see the birds. Our apricot tree is a very popular place for the Coal, Blue and Great tits to break up the sunflower hearts in the feeder. The birds probably feel safer in our evergreen conifers at the end of the garden at this time of year. Dunnocks are birds that also use the trees for cover and I have been able to see them a lot more recently. The conifers do look a bit out of place at the moment too, where everything else is changing colour.

One of my favourite colours in our garden at this time of year is the red-orange colour of the Goosberry plant leaves. They really stood out, and I thought it looked nice with the blurred bird table in the background. We only have one of these plants, so again, in the summer we don't get much fruit from them.

The colour really makes up for it though and makes the plant look amazing. Another berry plant in the garden is the Blackcurrant plant. This has spread over the years, and now is a large feature in the garden. The colours that this plant produce are very different to that of the Goosberry bush. The leaves appear "washed out". The photo is above. The last fruit bush I am going to talk about is the Rasberry one. This produced similar colours to the Goosberry plant, as you can see from the red and pink in the photo below.

I wonder what all your gardens look like at this time of year. Our garden probably varies greatly to all of yours.