A Week is a Long Time in Gardening

I love how being away for a few days highlights the changes in a garden. You know how it is - you go off for your holiday and when you get back - wow! Hasn't everything grown!

Having been away from home for just over a week at Avalon Spring (see my previous post), there are so many changes to admire. The blackthorns are covered in blossom, as is the weeping cherry - and my Amelanchier canadensis isn't far behind. The herb bed in the veggie patch is smothered with cowslip blooms, yellow as spring sunshine, though it merely had pale green buds when I left. The flowerbed by the kitchen is studded with sweet violets, and the weeping willow leaves which still looked spiky a week ago have unfurled to the extent that the hanging branches look fluffy, almost boa-like. The apple tree leaf buds are breaking and the elders are in full leaf already. What magic occurs in just a week!

I'm still awaiting the return of the swallows, but I have seem some by the River Towy in Carmarthen so they can't be far away. No wonder the poets always wax lyrical about April.