After a grey start the sun came out today and as Peter was incarcerated with an algebra module of his degree I took the chance to do some work in the garden. As the bog garden was in the sun that's where I decided to start clearing and weeding. Originally we had a shallow pool here but you can't defeat the inexorable power of moving water and over the years the stream has deposited enough gravel to fill the pool. Normally the stream is just a few inches deep but can rise a foot or more in heavy rain. The bog garden is home to lots of astilbes, arum lilies and some primulas though they don't seem to like the regular flooding. On the other side of the stream, which may belong to my neighbour, I've planted/dumped anything that might grow.
I spotted this frogspawn in the ornamental pond. This early frogspawn regularly gets killed by the bad weather that we get in February/March. I've taken a bucketful into the conservatory as usually when we take frogspawn into school after the half term holiday there is not enough time for it to develop into froglets before the Easter holidays. This way we might actually see some little frogs.
Some of the winter flowering heathers are covered in flowers. I've taken to heathers since I discovered they can grow straight in the clay and are slug resistant.
