Flat out in the garden for the last two and a half days. The weather very unfriendly on the hands, but we have had some periods of sunshine. Trying to lay brick paths before the old slabs of concrete are lifted to revamp the drive. There is a great bag of sand on the old drive and I have to use enough of it be able to move it before the 16th April, so conditions that I would normally think of as indoor only, are suddenly possible. EG worked hard on clearing weeds off the drive that will remain and gathering the piles of pebbles that are in the path of the new drive. We still have to take out some shrubs and cut down others. In the midst of this I had a call from the local nursery to say that they had some bare-rooted box for me after all. Today has been a tricky series of gymnastics in the tiny knot garden we made when the girls were small. I dug up the worst plants and trimmed them back to live growth, replanted them and put in the ten new ones. It looked fine a few years ago.

But it had become very thin and full of dead wood. If spring ever arrives we may see it restored. The ground is strangely dry, yet I am reluctant to water, given the nightly frosts. All the buds on the fruit trees and the japanese quince are ready to burst open. I fear they are going to go ahead any day now, frost or not. I have continued to bed the granite setts into the edge of the old dragon bed (There is a pile of giant granite boulders through the middle of the bed hiding an old stump). I am not sure about the look of this – a bit contrived, but it will give a hard edge for the mower and I can’t think where else to put them. We are still baffled by the vast quantity of granite and other stones all over this garden.

Hope I get some more outdoor time over Easter.