Spring Snow

On a sunny day, the Flower Garden looks truly springlike now, with blossom billowing from the branches of trees and primroses starring the ground at their feet, and masses and masses of tulips and narcissi to be picked.  Roses and many other perennials are making exquisite, fresh leafy growth - almost more exciting than when they're in full bloom, beacuse they're so bursting with the promise of good things to come.  Some days however, like today, we are plunged back into the depths of winter, with blankets of fog and sheets of rain.  Last Thursday was an especially wintry day with us, and I would gladly have turned around and gone back home were it not for two amazingly stalwart members of the team, Jak and Viv, who resolutely climbed into their waterproofs as the blizzard raged across the garden (and as  I made noises about the polytunnel,...) and shamed me by their very cheeriness into barrowing steaming woodchip with them to mulch some of the snowy ground.  Very warming work, barrowing woodchip.  By the next day the snow had melted and the plants didn't seem to have even registered it, not even the tender annual bergamot 'lambada' which has been hardening off in trays by the south-facing wall.  Tough little things.