Spring, and my garden coming alive:  like a drawing in black ink being washed with colour. Plums and apple and quince and medlar, all flowering or being close to. Magnolia’s in other people’s gardens –  do I have room for one more tree?

This year I have tulips that grow in containers. Which was the best option now that I have come to terms with the fact that very few tulips will behave like annuals – they need to be taken up after the leaves have died, then treated with heat, then replanted. Ideally, I’d cut the flowers off early so the bulb gets all the energy the leaves can create. Which defeats its purpose, really. Fortunately, by trial and error, I found one variety that keeps coming back year after year of and by itself. These are the mainstay of my april border, and  keep the idea of having border flowers alive in the difficult month of april, when witch hazel and snowdrops and other end-of-winter delights have gone. I do have lungwort, and this is a beautiful thing, but not enough in and of itself.

Note: be hard-hearted and throw container tulips away after flowering.