Spring has arrived!

One of the tasks here was to sort out the overgrown front garden.  This was essentially completed last November, when the rest of the old trees were chopped down and the roots grubbed up (see this entry), and then the new trees and hedge were planted (see this entry).  You can then, perhaps understand my joy at the arrival of spring and the sight of all four trees and all of the hedge showing a bumper crop of buds.  The cherry was the first to burst forth into flower (photo right), and the rest are following. NB The funny green on the lawn in the foreground is lawn reinforcement netting.

Last spring I observed that the different types of tree in the churchyard opposite blossomed in sequence, rather than all at the same time.  Thus, I chose to have four trees of similar types and hope that my front garden will have a similar tree in blossom to match one or more in the churchyard; it looks as though the plan is working.  For the record the trees along the front are a Sorbus Aria Lutescens (Whitebeam), a Prunus x yedoensis (Yoshino cherry) and an Amelanchier Arborea, with a hedge of Carpinus Betulus (Hornbeam) beside the front wall and a Malus Rudolph (crab apple) nearer to the house.  In fact, the planting was done on 28th November 2011, so they have only been in the ground for four months; this success is probably due to the skill of the people involved and the quality of their trees; they weren't cheap but I really do believe that if you try to save money on this sort of thing, you might just completely waste your cash by getting a result which doesn't meet your desires, so I consider the money was well spent. [Edit: As a much later correction to this, I noticed in the summer that my Sorbus was not in fact the same species as the tree in the churchyard.  My tree supplier suggests that the one in the churchyard is a Morus (Mulberry) so in fact my “expert” was not so clever after all. Grrrr….]

One other aspect of the front garden is that I was worried about what the locals would say.  I need not have worried, as I have had a considerable amount of unsolicited praise, not just from people who know me but from many random passers-by.  (I only have to work in the front for twenty minutes and I can guarantee that someone I don't know will stop and talk to me.)  Most locals are well aware of both how bad the condition of the house was and the consequent amount of  work done to get it to this standard.  One suspects that a lot of people have been observing (and wondering!) as slowly the front of the house was cleared and improved, together with the many visits by delivery lorries (30+?) and the grab lorry (9 or 10) in the last 17 months.  I think the comments I get now are partly due to their relief that I could have done far worse.  This public reaction is also quite a relief for me, as I didn't really want to annoy the long term locals by completely laying waste the garden!