It’s a month since anything was posted here … the parallel birding journal has been busy (https://sparroworks.ca/wildlifing/) but the long winter has meant that there hasn’t been a lot to say about the garden for a while other than to once again record that is buried under snow. Well, finally, on our return from the annual trip to England the snow is disappearing – though we may get more next week the forecasters say – and patches of grass are surfacing, albeit brown and sad looking. Some early spring birds have returned – see the link above – and the long awaited snowdrops have shown themselves. Snowdrops are really hard to get established here, although they grow well enough once they have settled in – this is primarily because they have to be sown from sets which are always unreliable rather than ‘in the green” as nobody supplies them in that form. A bit of a speciality plant in Canada … and one of the best.

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And so, the garden journal for 2014 starts here …

Meanwhile, as mentioned above, we have just come back from ten days in the UK where we managed to capture some real spring. Here is a small selection of photographs for those readers who are still snow-bound and need cheering up. Click on a thumbnail for the full-size slide show.