Spring is yellow

My new grass has been thriving in the well-timed rain and sun and the garden looks extraordinarily tidy - for now.... This week the first tulips are opening bringing to a close the almost-exclusive reign of spring yellows.

Of all flower colours my least favourite is yellow - the most repugnant combination I think I've ever seen is yellow and pink in the form of laburnam and clematis montana (unhappily a perennial combination I therefore drive past every year!) but since the yellows seem to dominate in early spring I can forgive them - the heady scent of mahonia, the delicate and unexpectedly shade-loving epimedium and the tough little hardy primrose which just keeps on multiplying in my garden are all special in their own right and I just have to forgive the forsythia for its cheerfulness.

But I also love Primula vulgaris subsp. sibthorpii the magenta/purple version of the wild primrose with which it seems to cross well producing some unexpectedly pretty seedlings.

Things will be speeding up from now on - including the number of balls arriving in the garden threatening my lovely Diana Roles ceramics without which - during the recent upheavals - the garden has been looking decidedly ordinary. I wonder if I am legally permitted to adopt a no-returns policy!