This is almost a live blog as I have come in for a breather. I started early as it is so hot,although even at eight thirty it was too warm. I have been digging out the stump of the huge tree at the bottom of the garden which fell down during the winter,luckily into our garden. It had been taken over by ivy to such and extent that not only had it killed the tree but the weight had dragged it down. I have been pecking away at it for months but Linda stopped me doing too much in case there were any hibernating hedgehogs in it. We know we have them as we have seen the droppings.I had to chop it into pieces with a pickaxe as the saw got stuck too easily. I was going to borrow a chainsaw but that would have been equally dangerous and I was not sure if there was not heavy duty wire grown into it which would have been very nasty to deal with, it had been part of the boundary and I had already had to cut down old metal posts and wire that they used in the sixties.I remember cutting an old tree down when we lived in the Cotswolds and it had a fence wire growing right through it - the chainsaw spat back at me and twisted my wrist and I was lucky that that was all it did! Ever since then I have followed safety rules to the letter.The gap left by the tree is where the new arbour is going.

At Milborne Port I finally got all the dahlias out and this week will concentrate on getting the pots sorted. At Wincanton I am having a full scale war with the rabbits which ate all the tops off my sunflowers. I ordered some more netting to do a new strawberry cage which I will finish this week.

The weather has been cold and changeable and we even had a frost on Wednesday which was a bit cruel.I was watching people wander away from the Garden Fair at Sherborne a couple of weeks ago with pelargoniums and all sorts of tender plants and at the time I was wondering whether they would harden them  off or just plonk them out and let them shiver and sulk for a few weeks.The lady next door to me called me round to have a look at her pelargoniums (ooh missus !) it was sun scorch as I suspected - you would have thought that at 85 she would have known that by now.
The most prominent flowers this week for me have been the aquelegias - I just love them and all the gardens I look after have loads of them so I will be digging up a few seedlings soon for our own garden.

This next week looks as if it will be warmer so I will be opening the greenhouses and planting out most of the tender plants. At each place I have been bringing them out to harden off so next week will be very busy.

I have decided to return to blogger as wordpress has just got too buggy and awkward to use I am sorry I ever went away.

The weather has been atrocious over the last couple of weeks but all my gardens are responding to the addition of copious amounts of water by greening up almost instantly. This also includes the weeds which are infesting nearly all gardens,particularly bindweed, which appears to be the number one problem.The Milborne Port garden has been in cultivation for at least two hundred years but still is full of bindweed and ground elder - in my opinion there have been some very lazy gardeners over the last  few years as it is not a huge area to cover.The same at Wincanton which also has a couch grass problem as well.The top picture is at Milborne Port where the wallflowers and tulips have been a huge hit with the owners.
At home we are now making progress with the garden - we bought some feeding troughs very cheaply and they are now going to double as herb garden (pictured) and as vegetable gardens further up the garden.We have also bought a seating arbour which will go at the top of the garden so that we can sit and look over at the castle but that is stored in the garage until we are able to get round to it !