Tulips up-date

Here is another view with the tulips a little more mature showing those mentioned in my last post - notice the size of "Brown Sugar"! - along with old favourites "Ronaldo" and "Ballerina" and "Blue Heron" which is pretty but rather delicate plus a few strays from last year.

Tulips in 2017

My trusted Sony camera has gone wrong! So I am limited for images of my tulips just now. But suffice it to say that this year I have learned to look at the height descriptions of tulips. "Brown sugar" is a lovely and long-lasting flower but it is massive in comparison with the rest of my collection, rather dwarfing them.
Successes have included "Black Hero" which I have been meaning to try for years and it is really living up to expectation; not so dark that it looses it's colour but a wonderful contrasting note, "Slawa" with a really rich contrast of deep purpley-plum and orange edging and "Shirley's Dream" which really does open pale cream with a hint of pink edging and then mature to a delicious soft mid-pink - great with "Black Hero".
The small red and white "Pinocchio" is also a real treasure which I've tried out in a new spot nearer the house.

Spring energy

Over the past couple of weeks, with the milder weather and sun, everything has begun bursting into life. The grass is responding to moss kill, weed and feed, the roses and clematis are sprouting and suddenly the tulips are coming out. The first one opened on Wednesday. Here it is.

In my newly instated vegetable patch the broad beans are coming along with varying degrees of success. Three look to be forming flowers already but two or three look very sad. I suspect the birds have been pecking at them and am intending to protect them with some plastic bottle surrounds. The greenhouse is tidier although with still much work to be done but I am excited that my first home-grown courgette seedlings have emerged and the climbing french beans are also well on their way. Planted another potful yesterday in addition to 13 dahlia tubers, all from Sarah Raven this year. Some looked a bit puny but we will see. (The ones I dug up and tried to overwinter in the shed were a soggy mess again, fit only for the bin.)