With the help of a growing labyrinth of ditches, the flood waters are beginning to recede at the allotment site, although my own plot lies in a dip and getting on with any work remains a muddy business as there is still standing water around most of the beds.
I have pruned the autumn fruiting raspberries and between them planted about two dozen snowdrop bulbs. These I hope can flourish in the same bed along with a mass of beautiful, deep red, aquilegia which flower from late spring to early summer. Columbine is another name for this delicate flower, meaning dove in Latin as the petals resemble five doves in a circle, if turned upside-down, and ‘aquila’, meaning eagle, describes the claw shaped spurs of the flower.
The rhubarb patch is coming to life at its usual rapid pace now that we are at the start of spring, their wrinkled shoots unfurling into an expanse of shiny leaves. In the autumn I heaped a barrow-load of compost on top of the plants which are already raised up off the ground so they should not be affected by the high levels of water.
One of the pleasures of this time of year is deciding which seeds to sow for the coming season and I have chosen a very highly scented sweet pea with a cream base and violet pictotee, meaning that they have a purple colour around the edge. It is the perfume that I am really after, but I shall sow them with some of last year’s sweet pea seeds for a mix of colour and variety.
