It’s easy to feel utterly overwhelmed with sadness and anxiety when the entirety of humanity seems to be falling apart at the hands of the dreadful COVID-19 disease. These are difficult and unprecedented times.

Meanwhile though, nature carries on doing its job, and that is truly a great relief.

While we’re stuck at home, so many people are preening their gardens, mowing their lawns like never before, or even getting into gardening for the first time (and subsequently crashing every gardening website going!). I feel very fortunate to have a garden, and I cannot imagine what it must be like for people living with a family in a flat, where a busy park is the only space they can use.

The sun has been shining, often blazing hot enough to make me question switching off the heating, or putting the duvet away. In recent years, we’ve only just escaped the snow.

The garden really has lit up with green shoots, swollen buds, and bursting flowers. None less than the Tulips.

They’ve been joined by my Dicentra ‘Spectabilis’ (aka ‘Bleeding Hearts’), which from it’s semi-shaded pot spot, it’s throwing spires of heart-shaped delicate pink flowers out to brighten a dull corner.

Some sprawling Wallflowers (these might be second generation) are giving a splash of yellow and reddy-gold, occasionally punctuated by some wandering Forget-Me-Nots that I certainly didn’t plant. They get everywhere even if you think you haven’t let them.

Across the garden, in the partly-shaded area (where the fence casts a shadow), the darker tones are broken by a Forsythia and its yellow flowers. This plant is beginning to become established, and has grown a lot in the last year since I rescued it from a certain death in a cardboard tube at the back of a shelf in Poundland.

The Forsythia does a lot of growing after the flowers come, and it is followed by lots of lush green leaves. I used to have one of these at my previous house in a somewhat shady border with poor soil. I just knew that it could fit in here.

The tulips though, certainly are the brightest flowers in the garden right now.

Whatever you’re doing in this period of lockdown, I hope that you’re able to still find a spot where you can safely take a breath of fresh air, hear the birds busily cheeping, and feel the sunshine.

Take care friend,

Andrew