Dry.

The sun was out this morning making me realise just how much I missed it. I flew through my morning jobs so that I could spend the day working outside. It wasn't until Peter got home as I was clearing up that I saw that I had been working for 5 hours without a break. My first and main job was to clear up the mess where the scaffolding had been. I'm not a neat freak but too much mess makes me feel uncomfortable. I put away the ladders, bagged up junk for the dump and cleared away all the weeds and every bit off broken concrete and brick. I also cut down most of the ivy that had regrown on the wall then scraped the bark off the remaining main stem and sprayed it with heavy duty weed killer. Have to use chemicals sometimes.

 Before.

 After.

The sky turned grey in the afternoon but the rain held off and I carried on. Much as I would have liked to finish off up in the scree garden now that I have my ladders back I thought it was more important to clear out the gutters at the back of the house. Cleaning out the twigs and stinky sludge was not fun but I'm glad I got it done. Then I noticed that weeds were beginning to appear in the bog garden by the stream. It's never too early to get rid of the weeds and some of them had started to flower. So I pulled up all the weeds and cut down the dry stalks of the astilbes too. 

Elsewhere in the garden new shoots are appearing. These are some montbretia and something else which I'm not sure of. On my journey to work there are some clumps of snowdrops flowering in the hedgerow opposite the houses at Burridge and a bit nearer town there is a large patch of primroses in flower. Roll on spring.