March Blooms

Gardening Blogging is a completely daft activity. You sit there all winter with time on your hands and nothing to write about, then when spring arrives and you've got loads to say, you've no time - you're too busy doing it.

Hence the silence over the past ten days or so. The good weather has continued with bright sunshine and temperatures of up to 25°C every day. My seeds are now almost all in, and the ones I got round to first are starting to germinate. Goodness knows where I'm going to put them as all the containers are full, but I suppose I'll have a bit of space when the biennials finish.

Carol of May Dreams Garden suggested that on the 15th of each month, people posted about what was currently in bloom. So here goes. I'm excluding a couple of things which I just got from the garden centre - everything listed here has been with me all winter :

The primroses and cyclamen that I've posted photos of before are still going strong. I'm particularly proud the cyclamen in the photo, which I grew from seed.

And the salmon pelargonium which didn't stop blooming all winter still hasn't. It's been blooming continuously for almost a year now.

Over the last week the daffodils have all come out and are absolutely stupendous. I've moved the container to the spot in front of the French doors of the living room so that we can see them all the time. they're right underneath the bright red of the cyclamen. I know gardening books tut tut over combining red and yellow, but I love it. Especially in the spring.

Lots of stuff is almost there, with buds just starting to open. That includes wallflowers, stock, bellis, sedum, and some daisies that I don't know the name of.

And then there are the pansies ....

These little pansies must be amongst my favourite flowers. I have two or three containers on the balcony every winter, and love the way that in the spring they just seem to explode and become totally riotous. I love the mixture of different colours - and have sometimes had some of the best results from seeds taken from past plants where the colours have all got mixed up. They come out looking as if someone has gone crazy splashing paint all over them. Sadly, none of last year's seeds germinated so I had to start from scratch and bought these in the autumn. They go from deep bordeaux to this crazy orange and violet combination. If this lot get mixed up, next year's plants should be great fun.

Spring has Sprung

Spring arrived with the beginning of the month and we've had blue skies, bright sunshine and temperatures around 20°C - that's about 68°F - all week. The forsythia is out, and so are all the flowering trees, and the grass is full of little forget-me-nots and violets. The photo is one of the trees in the garden outside the front balcony, taken this morning.

I celebrated by spring cleaning both balconies and putting all the containers back into their summer positions. The perennials and bienniels are all back in growth, and the bulbs are pushing through. I didn't plant my daffodils till December, otherwise they'd probably be out by now- they're all in bud and almost ready. The bulbs include one tub which is going to be a surprise - I forgot to label it, can't remember what I put in there and so far can't recognise it from the shoots. Allium perhaps??? I know I meant to get some, but can't remember if I actually did. A new venture for me this year is some agapanthus. It's not done much so far - there are a couple of small shoots but nothing very exciting. Again, it went in late.

And then I got on with sowing all the annuals for the summer. For some of the more delicate ones, I'm a good month ahead of last year, but with such high temperatures it didn't seem worth holding back. Please, please don't let it change.