September flowers

 Hello September, where did you go? I seem to have blinked and missed it. Spring might be here but Mother Nature hasn't got the memo and is still lashing us with cold and wet wintery weather! It's not time to take the flannelette sheets off the bed just yet.

I did actually have last week off from work and we did, actually, have a couple of warm days in there... they are a distant memory now. My aim was to get stuck into the garden, in particular the front garden which has been a bit neglected. We had the drive repaired recently and it looks amazing, meaning everything else looks shabby in comparison, and I wanted to enlarge the beds and put more plants around the roses, etc etc... I'll go into more detail in another post when the beds have filled out a bit and look more photo-worthy. Suffice to say, I got about half of what I wanted done! It was hard work digging, planting and shifting things. I'm pleased with the effort though and if I had another week off I'd get the lot finished... alas I'm back at work next week so it will be back to the weekend gardening, as long as the weather behaves.

Things are waking up in the flower garden, slowly due to the long winter and cold start to spring. If I look back at photos from previous years I can see that everything is set back a bit in comparison. I still have plenty of bulb and blossom though...

Above, from top left: ipheion uniflorum (spring star), fondant hyacinth, a posy of daffodils and geranium, peach blossom, almond blossom, vintage looking pansy, camellia fairy blush, pink and purple anemones, paper daisies, anemones in their natural habitat, yet another anemone, monarch daffodils.

This is the spring planting lining my driveway. It's a riot of pastel frills and ruffles and smells just heavenly. It fills out a bit every year and will only improve as the camellias get taller. Interestingly enough, the hyacinths have put on a much better show than last year and I wonder if it's due to cooler temps or more frosts or something... a lot of spring bloomers seem to be improved by frost first. Anyway, working out the front has been much improved by having this to look at, and I've even had passing neighbours stop and tell me how nice it looks. That spurs me on... hopefully I'll be able to get the rest of it up to standard soon!

Linking up to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day even though I'm a few days late...