Monday 20th April 2026 - Waking Up, Back with the Dinosaurs and Cat Food Update

For me, one of the joys of spring, is watching plants and trees waking up after the long winter sleep.  Not everything wakes up at once; it’s gradual.  In our garden, first it’s the snowdrops followed by other spring bulbs bursting into flower.  Not long after, on a sunny day we see the first of the butterflies, emerging after hibernation, followed by orange tips and holly blues.  Then there are the bees who are the first visitors to our early flowering hellebore and when the blooms have set seed there are other plants for them to visit.  They particularly like our pulmonaria.  The other day, Peter drew my attention to some holes in the back lawn, near our olive trees.  At first, I thought these were made by ants but no, for the second year, we have ground nesting bees – the mower or strimmer won’t be going anywhere near here.  There are plants which I thought hadn’t made it through the cold months but in recent days, they’ve shown signs of life, with their first leaves forming.  On the subject of leaves, the buds on most of the trees are now opening to reveal fresh succulent leaves and that includes our walnut which is one of the last trees, around here, to leaf up.

With the days getting lighter, I am woken earlier each morning by the dawn chorus.  I don’t know if it’s just me, being more aware, but bird song throughout the day seems more prolific and varied this year.  Last year we had a pair of blackbirds visiting our garden each day, pulling bugs out of the grass, as well as slugs and worms from the compost bin, all to feed their growing family.  This year, we have a pair again but they’re not visiting regularly; maybe they’ve found an easier and better source of food.  There are a lot of, what appear to be, unpaired males; their song in the early evening is probably my favourite birdsong.

There are some beautiful spring flowering magnolia trees to be seen in village gardens.  Often referred to, because of the shape of their flowers, as tulip trees, I’ve recently learnt a bit more about them.  This was from watching one of Danni in the Wild's vlogs and last week’s Gardeners' World programme posted on YouTube.  Here are some, of what I consider to be, interesting facts covering these trees.  Fossils of magnolias have been found; these go back to the time of the dinosaurs.  They were about before bees came on the scene and were pollinated, and still are, by beetles. The blooms don’t have petals, they have tepals (taken from Wikipedia - A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower. The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals).  The flowers can be eaten or preserved; they provide a ginger taste/flavour - I don’t think this is something I’ll be trying but good to know, all the same.

A brief update on cat food.  The Untamed tins arrived but guess what, Sid won’t eat it!  I’ve now ordered Harringtons, in our weekly online grocery order.  This has more meat that other cat foods sold by supermarkets; I wait to see what he thinks of this.  In the meantime, he’s on the food I give feral Lunar…….which he is eating.

Back to spring, today’s photo is of blossom buds on our apple tree.  This is my favourite fruit tree blossom with its delicate pink tinged flowers.