Life in a Back Garden: Like an angel passing

I have a great love of profound and complex music: previously I referred to The Sound of Music and today I reference the work of Abba. For like angels passing through my room the beauties of the plants in my gardens can sometimes be so fleeting that if you do not pause and linger awhile to see then you might miss them altogether.

First daffodil: Narcissus 'Tete-a-tete'

The miniature Iris I referred to in a previous post did indeed flower in February - and already they are beginning to go over.

Iris reticulata

The delicate ephemera of life grabs our attention first: Primula, Galanthus nivalis , and Crocus tommassinianus - even the seedling of a foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, will this year increase its rosette, put up a majestic flower spike then die casting its seed in its thousands across the ground.

While in the background the evergreen and long-lived constants are barely noticed: Yew (Taxus baccata - the oldest of which in Scotland is older than Christianity) and Irish Ivy (Hedera hibernica).

Towering above all this is the bare Sycamore doing that dead man fingering the sky thing - and yet this Acer pseudoplatanus is far from dead.

My garden is littered with thousands of its seeds which shall need picking for many months to come and just when you think you have them all you will spot another crowd of seedlings that will seem to have come up overnight - and, hey, maybe they did.

And the leaf litter it creates and which I have saved in a wire mesh cage can build and sustain the structure of the soil and the millions of organisms that thrive within it.

Although I have plenty of spring things still just showing their tips above the soil there is the odd person that thinks it must be summer. This Pink is part of something called The Early Bird Series, but really . . .