By H.W

First, enter the mallards, striding purposefully across the lawn. Are they after crumbs from the bird feeder? Every other creature seems to be, including the dog! Are they feasting on the carpet of holly berries the squirrels have scattered on the drive, or are they the reason I’ve not seen any frogspawn this year? It seems the mesh protecting the frog pool hasn’t deterred them!

Spring has sprung and more flowers join the orchestra of colour. Daisies, celandines, violets and primroses in the lawn, wild garlic along the stream, and dandelions in my vegetable garden! I recently read about how valuable dandelions are to insects for early nectar, but do I have to keep the ones in my vegetable garden as well?!

After a few days of dry weather, I was able to lightly fork over the vegetable garden with the advice on the value of weeds persisting in my mind. Celandines – there are so many of those everywhere, a few could go... Red dead nettle – I’ve seen the bees on that when in flower and I know they love it – I’ll leave a bit... Native forget-me-nots – great clumps of them. I’ve already decided to leave those until they start to seed... I don’t mind the odd Foxglove appearing, the bees make a real rumble when they’re foraging in their tubular flowers... Aquilegias are suited to our ground and seed everywhere – I’ll just let the odd one stay... Ground ivy – well I draw the line at that! It has probably got some benefit to some creature, but it’s not me! That has to go! Vegetables? Well, I don’t think there’s much room for them - the flowers seem to have taken over!

I did see someone enjoying the Pulmonaria. It was a fat little bee as black as coal. Looking it up, it might have been a hairy-footed flower bee. I do hope so with a name like that!

In the end, I had to remove quite a lot of flowers to clear a strip for the potatoes. It was getting ridiculous! “Is it a veg garden, or a flower garden?” I asked myself. As I worked, I saw how popular the Pulmonaria were for many insects, so a good one to have in your garden.

Butterflies appeared in mid-April, Brimstone being the first, then Orange Tip feeding on ladies’ smock, a Speckled Wood and a Peacock butterfly feeding on the dandelions – good job I saved some of those after all!