Has anyone seen any daffodils yet? Not the dwarf early ones, although they have only just opened in the last few days, but the taller ones. Its all so late this year, it seems to me. I heard that the annual daffodil weekend at Thriplow in Cambridgeshire had very few of these flowers out for what can be a very popular event. On the plus side the Magnolia in the garden is full of buds so I do hope they won’t get spoilt by late frosts.

Last week I was able to do quite a lot of cuttting back of ornamental grasses and other perennials which was quite satisfying. The ground had begun to dry out a bit and there were no squelchy noises when I walked around the garden. But after another inch of rain (and snow) over the weekend we are back to square one and there is surface water lying around everywhere. My activities in the garden will be severely curtailed for the next week or more and I will have to restrict my movements to the hard surfaces.

Lots of potting has been done recently and the polytunnels are nearly full. There’s a problem at this time of year making decisions about when to put plants out from the cosy protection of the tunnel to the raw weather outside. One day the temperature on the min/max thermometre was a high of 22 degrees c and a low of -1 degree c. Poor plants having to adjust themselves to such a wide variation in such a short period of time. The longer they stay under cover the more soft growth there is and then the more vulnerable that soft growth is to being damaged by late frosts.