Spring is not really springing

Well wrapped up against the cold

The start of 2018 has been cold, wet and snowy.  The garden has been covered under a thick blanket of snow for so long and finally it disappeared and now as I sit by the fire keeping warm it is snowing again!  

My first wedding of the year is this weekend.  The bride to be and her mother came to the house at this time last year to have a wander around the garden to choose the flowers for the wedding.  There was lots flowering.  Tulips, daffodils, hellebores, snowflakes and fritillaria.  This year there is nothing!  Luckily I can still source flowers from the UK from wholesalers in the south west of England so we will be ok which is a huge relief.

The seed sowing has continued and at last they seem to be growing.  This weekend was spent planting out the first batch of sweet peas in the polytunnel.  These were sown in January as the October sown seeds were killed off by the cold.  

Roots looking healthy

They look a bit lost but will soon start to climb 

Generally I sow sweet peas in root trainers, they love to stretch their legs

A new addition in the polytunnel is a rose bed.  They have been transplanted from the garden and hopefully it will mean bigger and better blooms in the summer.  Getting battered by wind and rain and a lack of sunshine took its toll last year and the blooms I had were very inferior so fingers crossed.

So whilst there is a very slow start to spring I am heartened that finally the annuals already planted out in the polytunnel will soon start flowering and we will have flowers like these ones.