Spring Flowers

Meanwhile the garden is looking very well. The mild dry winter (It was mild and dry wasn't it) here in Ireland allowed plenty of tidying time and the lawn has already been mown. The usual flowers making their appearance. Daffodils at more or less the expected time, the newly planted snowdrops now gone and the tulips ready to bloom.

The nice thing about the informality and lack of planning (more or less) of the garden is the surprise of the unexpected when flowers you planted and forgot about bloom. Or even when the expected flourish as is happening with the primroses - year by year a larger clump. Photo above - a few cowslips as well but they seem not to multiply at the same rate.

And an unexpected hellebore (below). My Christmas rose, helleborus niger, was a disappointment this year but this one makes up for it. Beside it my Bleeding Heart, dicentra spectablis, which is another disappointment. It seems to have bloomed at least a month earlier than last year and with much less blooms and foliage.