Spring blossoms and green shoots

This weekend is a great time to visit Iford if you like cherry blossoms (and who doesn't?).  The lawns have been mown off for the first proper cut of the season, and our songbirds have been out and about making the most of the unseasonally warm weather.

This Sunday Iford opens for the first time in 2012, and we shall be opening fully throughout April on account of the increasingly early Spring.  The tearoom will also be open, so there's a warm cup of tea or an ice cream depending on the weather.

And whilst we're at it, cross your fingers for the replacement cypress trees which have gone in to replace those lost to the horrendous seiridium disease which is causing real problems for our cypresses.

New signs on A36 - thanks, (I think...?)

We're very grateful to whichever department of whichever bit of government has decided that our 'brown signs' needed upgrading on the A36.  They were quite small and now you shouldn't possibly be able to miss them, given their ENORMOUS size.

However, I wonder if the person putting them up considered the view for oncoming traffic from the Warminster direction?  Hmm... (admittedly, marginally better, but not much, if you are actually in the middle of the road, but I didn't fancy getting killed whilst taking the photo!)

Wisteria-watch 2

It is 25 March, so here's an update on the Wisteria.  The good news is that it looks like a varied picture insofar as timing is concerned, so more people will get a chance to enjoy the abundant blossom and magnificent scent.

We have the first frond about a week away on the front of the house (always the first to come out because of the South-West facing warm wall), but some of the buds in the freestanding wisteriae which are in colder parts of the garden have still barely formed buds (ETA for those, first week in May).  Here's the state of play, pictorially:

The vanguard: on the front of the manor:

 But not the whole thing, because it always starts at the tip and works back:

The casita wisteria, again with its back to a warm-ish wall, is coming along nicely.

But the freestanding wisteria around the lily pond is weeks away from being ready.

  Nevertheless, for anyone thinking that the second week in May will see the wisteria appearing, as has traditionally been the case, I suspect it will be too late by then.  Come in April, and get the best of both worlds: the blossoms in the first few weeks and the wisteria at the back end of the month.

What is with this weather?

The spring is arriving consistently early with an ongoing lack of rain and warm weather in the early months of the year.  Yesterday we were the same temperature as Phoenix, AZ.  Madness.

It is interesting to compare this year with last year, lest we forget what early really looks like.  Iford sits in something of a rain shadow, compared to surrounding valleys, due to the local topography.  By this time in 2011, we had had a very snowy winter with prolonged freezing temperatures and our plants were even more advanced than they are now.  Compare the images below.  Although we didn't get the snow this year, the cold was certainly present; but after an unusually wet spell from September through to December, we haven't had meaningful rain for three months.  Bear in mind that in a 'normal' year, we would expect this to flower in about a fortnight.

March 22, 2011:

 March 24, 2012:

I hope really hope that this is not the new "normal" and that we can return to temperate, Atlantic weather soon - farmers are already feeling the drought very badly, and gardeners in the south west will be questioning whether or not they should even bother to bed out this year, following two winters in a row which were record breakingly cold, with droughts in February and March.  In the Eastern counties we already have hosepipe bans in place with a view to ensuring that domestic water supplies will not be interrupted in the Summer.

Cross your fingers, folks, but it seems like we're becoming increasingly Mediterranean (only with colder winters...) which in theory would suit Peto's Anglo-Italianate design style; except that the winters will mean some serious thinking in terms of our planting scheme, maintenance schedule, materials used (limestone just flakes away in freezing damp conditions...).  Cypresses have been under attack from the Seiridium virus, and we have had to replace a number of near-mature trees this year;

Wisteria-watch

For those of you who try to time a visit to Iford to coincide with your favourite wisteria being out, I am running a feature this year called Wisteria-watch.  By examining the various wisterias (wisteriae?) in photographic detail, I hope you will be better informed to judge when is the moment juste for your visit.  After all, it is never quite the same from year to year and with the odd continental weather we are having at the moment, particularly hard to to predict.


Not to panic, though.  It looks like this at the moment:

Some Signs of Spring

Some pictorial signs of spring appearing.  Undeniably weird weather, and we desperately need rain...

Compost time

Nothing like a good photograph of some compost to lighten up a gloomy Tuesday.  Our compost is all home-grown, as it were, fuelled by the output of the tearoom, grass clippings, cuttings, and all manner of other recyclable remains.  Free nutrition for plants!

Spring is most definitely sprung

 If there had been any doubts at all, the Iford valley was undeniably kicked into Spring today.  Blackbirds, enjoying the sunshine and warmth, sang their hearts out with myriad songs.  Blossom yielded up its sweet scent, and this evening I saw my first bat of the year, foraging around the bridge for some early season mosquitoes presumably.