Grey today but I've noticed a pair of swans near to the River Gowy prospecting for a nesting site. It may be cold again but they know Spring is unstoppable and egg laying essential.  Tarporley Farmers Market today and I'm going to find the first rhubarb and some purple sprouting broccoli.  Guests coming on Monday from Yorkshire.  They've been coming for years and years so its fun.

Spring is coming

No more snow.  And the hellebores are pink and white and purple, the forsythia is blinding yellow, even the salad leaves in the polytunnel are above ground. 

Update on Friday, March 4, 2011 at 11:19AM by Deborah Newman

A dramatic fierce frost this morning so that the hellebore flowers were face down on the soil and spider webs were glistening white circles stretched between the rose bushes.  Still got time to put in a new Lord Derby apple tree.  Delightful 2 couples stayed last weekend to visit Liverpool.  They took the tourist bus which dropped them at the Walker Art Gallery, climbed on again to go past the Cavern, had lunch at No. 7 Falkner Street, (excellent) then home again on the ferry to Seacombe.  And the next day back they went to go to mass in the Cathedral - Christ the Redeemer.     

Autumn at Greenlooms

Delicious cucumbers - over-run by the blighters, stacked up on the shelf by the kitchen door.  No one is allowed to leave without one.  Quinces are glowing and yellow, the last swallow young are nerving up to leave the safety of the the garage nursery.  The parents have already gone.