18 February 2024

We’re getting really impatient now! We want to start cutting back dead stems and clearing the dry leaves from the flower beds, to make way for this year’s growth and lots more flowers. But we need to wait just a little bit longer, till the weather’s just a little warmer. Those scruffy dead stems and leaves shelter a lot of insects from the cold, and it’s only February still.

The teasels and wild carrots are also providing seeds for hungry goldfinches; there are a dozen or so living round here, the other day I say half a dozen on one of the teasels near the war memorial. I don’t know how they’re still finding seeds to eat – but they do, so that’s OK 🙂

We’ve noticed a lot more insects around the gardens over the last couple of years, which suggests we’re doing something right by leaving them a bit untidy until spring’s really here – or to put it another way, if we want more of these

we need to leave this:

We have removed a few dead leaves, particularly around the pulmonaria plants

and the hellebores

to clear a space around the flowers, which are such a welcome sign of things to come. We’ll just leave the rest of it till about the beginning of March.