The importance of being earnest...

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde

Well a little more than 2 weeks has gone by since my last blog and life has been pretty hectic with spring arriving in all it's glory; tulips and narcissus are in full bloom, camellias and magnolias, forget-me-nots and doronicums, all splashing colour and cheering us.

The nuthatches are busy flying to and fro from the nest box in my garden, calling me me me me me me endlessly (very annoying after a while). Blackbirds are scurrying around in earnest with beaks full of small worms so presumably they have young to feed and the sparrowhawk makes an occasional dart through the garden scattering birds wide and far.

The amount of growth that herbaceous plants put on by the week is amazing at this time of year. But all that effort has to be rewarded so if you haven't got a thick mulch of compost on the beds it's not too late to add a small spadeful around each clump now. A small handful of the organic manure 6X liberally scattered and forked in would be a real treat....

As trees and shrubs are now coming in to leaf, it is a good time to look for bare, or dead branches and cut them out them to stop the spread of disease. Following the heavy snowfall back in January and those plunging temperatures, there are unsurprisingly a large number of branches to be removed.

Delphiniums, lupins and hollyhocks that were sown back in the autumn have now been potted up individually into 9cm pots and lined out in the sun to grow on for a few more weeks. This way they stand more chance of surviving the ravages of slugs and heavy rain storms (and if our summer is anything like the last few wet ones, they will need staking later as well).

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to talk on New Zealand's "Radiolive" gardening programme hosted by my friend Tony Murrell, who also presents the TV programme "Ground Force". Having never spoken on the radio before, it seemed kinda strange talking to Tony about what I've been doing in an English garden in spring, knowing the listeners were experiencing a Kiwi autumn. The scheduled 5 mins became 10 mins, and it was certainly a great experience and kept me alert as I had to remember not to say anything inappropriate. Apparently there are a lot of ex-pats living over there who like to keep in touch with their roots and miss the English gardens (but apparently not our weather...). Suffice to say I was told that the interview went ok and I've been asked back again to talk about wildlife gardening in a few weeks.

Roses have been sprayed this week with "Roseclear" which will now become a regular weekly routine, saucers of beer have been placed in the borders as organic slug traps, nigella, papaver and calendula seeds scattered in beds and borders to top up late summer colour and sweet pea plants had their tips pinched out at 6" to encourage side shoots.

I can't finish without mentioning the pupster Jet. All in all it has been a good couple of weeks behaviour-wise. Apart from being freaked by a fallen tree trunk (I can only assume it resembled a predator of some kind...) and learning to return plant labels (albeit after she has pulled them out of the ground, chewed them to pieces and rendered them useless ...), she has been superb company. I have come to terms with her fascination with bees, fear of frogs, hatred of pigeons, curiosity of postmen (I'm hoping this doesn't develop down the wrong road) the love of sunshine and the earnest way she observes the activity of our feathered friends.

All I need to do now is work out how to get her to recall. So if anyone has any good advice on this tricky subject, perhaps they could pass it on........