Time to catch up ...

 For four weeks I've been mainly hiding indoors suffering from a long, lengthy cold virus, while the first phase of spring - the bright yellow of daffodils - has passed and been replaced by a wave of whites, reds and blues.

The large red tulips are mainly Appeldoorn variety but there's one solitary darker flower - I think from some bulbs once forced indoors, then planted out.







The whitebells have been spreading through the garden for many years now, but I recently added some bluebells and pinkbells which I picked up through my local Freecycle group. Sadly the 'blues' aren't native English bluebells but they still look pretty.

 Forget-me-nots are softening the path edges with a river of pale blue, with occasional dog violets among them.

The first flower on my new(ish) camellia!

















I even have the first outdoor veg crop of the season growing - radishes from home-grown seed

Yesterday, for the first time in a long while, I joined hubby on his trip to the allotment as he wanted my opinion on the various bits of brassicas that have over-wintered. The purple-sprouting broccoli had both run to seed and been nibbled by birds, but the cabbages are standing well, and if they aren't very large, at least there's a lot of them. I brought three of them home to clear ground ready for potatoes; at a guess the one on the right is about grapefruit sized!



The fruit trees seem full of bud, particularly this  pear (left) and cherry (below), and another week or so should see them full of blossom.























 Blossom of another sort lined the road to the allotment - council-planted ornamental cherries which always look so beautiful at this time of year, and I just had to grab a few pics out of the car window.