Things That Made Me Smile Today

For someone as impatient as I am, today was a "wake up and see the progress" kind of day. In spite of the longer days, it's still dull when I leave home in the morning and usually dark when I get home, so I haven't had a chance to keep pace with what's happening in the garden. And a lot of wonderful things have been happening.

The straggler hyacinth is flowering and wafting eye-watering perfume. I've been sniffing it up today, big time.

These will be blue one day too. Flowers galore on the blueberries. I seem to have hit on a winner with the rose mulch around these guys. They love it. And they don't mind their strawberry neighbours either.

Raspberries erupting all over the top terrace. I've revised the potato planting plans because of this... I'm not going to argue with a raspberry on a mission.

Perhaps the biggest surprise and the biggest smile today. We're not allowed to pick the asparagus this year, but it's thrilling just to see it growing, straight up out of the ground like they say in the gardening books.

New to the garden this year -- a carrot patch. I have no idea how this will end -- I mean they are too cute to pull up, but we must thin carrots if we want a crop. For now I'm just happy they germinated. It's a first for me.

The hellebores out front are settling right in, loving their early morning sun and shady days, and making babies by the look of it.

Hazelnuts budding up provocatively.

The first peach. Look at all those buds. Surely they won't all fruit? This is my first serious venture into fruit growing, and I have no idea what's going to happen next. Very exciting.

Apologies for the photo, but it's the only way I can describe the olives. Tall and gangly, like standard roses but silver and feathery. It's hard to imagine raking fruit from them, but that's what the labels promise, and that's what I suspect will happen come May or June next year.

The camera left to its own devices... these surprise photos always make me smile.

From a distance it all still looks a bit bleak out front... but this steep hillside is slowly, steadily being transformed into the orchard, berry patch, hedgerow and herb garden of my dreams.

Thanks to Kaye for the right mix of sensitive and adventurous planting and Dru for the gravity defying growbeds and hardscaping.