Warm

This circle of stones on the lawn marks a place where daffodils are coming up. This is to remind me not to step on them or mow over them.

There are eight stones, representing the Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

After the cold snap, a beautiful sunny, warm day! I've been gardening (natch), and the garlic is in the ground now. Next job will be prune the roses, perhaps tomorrow if it's dry. The bulbs are just starting to pop up, I can see them now I've removed the weed growth over them. 
  I've just realised that I've missed my anniversary of moving into this house. Thirteen years have gone by, in a flash it seems, since 22 June, 2002, the day I moved in. The garden has changed a lot in that time. I've added more flowering things and taken out some of the things that were planted before me. It would be fascinating to go back and tour the garden as it was then, but that was before I had a good camera or took many photos. I guess the biggest change would be eliminating the shrubbery in the back garden and replacing it with a vegetable garden. I seem to be in a long process of making the garden more productive of yummy food! 

The lesser celandine, Ranunculus ficaria, also known as pilewort because of the shape of its roots. 

It was used as such in medieval times, and considered to be a proof of the "doctrine of signatures", whereby God fashioned plants in the shape of the human body part that they were most likely to heal.

And Wordsworth wrote a poem about them:

"There's a flower that shall be mine,

'Tis the little celandine"

Dear little pansies, still flowering in spite of the cold.

When I first came to the garden, I bought lots of plants. Quite a lot of them died, so now I'm left with the "good-doers" which require no mollycoddling. I'm following the path of less resistance now, not buying expensive and exotic things, or species that have proved to be no-goers in my soil and situation. It's all much easier, but still interesting and beautiful. And often the simplest plants provide the most satisfaction. Less is more.