"Proper" April weather ...

... has been our lot the last few days, a mixture of brief showers - even a little hail - and sunshine.  The forecast of frost overnight for Friday and Saturday was not as bad as we feared, although it has turned considerably colder.  I'll give you a few pictures from last week, 2 from Tuesday morning where the group of 13 were all cuddled up in the middle of the garden for one of their many siestas:

 










On Thursday it looked very bright in the garden with trees and shrubs and bulbs breaking out into leaf and blossom:

 

On Friday morning I was able to present fisherman friend Graham with the Gansey that had been on his wish list for many years.  He was just plain 'over the moon' with the surprise, even though I'd knitted the sleeves a bit too long for him!


In the afternoon I went out to start mending the fence which I'm hoping will keep the three escapees from the bottom hut IN once all holes are blocked.  On the way I was surprised to see that the checker-board fritillaries were out in force at the bottom of the orchard - and a bit disappointed that my patch of cowslips seems to have been buried under the track of the JVB:

 

The wood anenomes and pagoda lilies are breaking out, too:

Yesterday, Saturday, I spent most of the day in my "woodland garden" and the ditch.  I managed to clear a large section of the latter from the mass of overgrowing brambles and fallen trees, but a lot remains to be done:


Our three escapologists stayed at the edge of the woodland to keep an eye on me - that was after I had to fetch them back from the nature pond twice.

Same story today, I've been twice to order them back home.  It's hard to see what the attraction is, there's hardly any water in the pond [while their own big pond is clean and full] and no vegetation around it yet, but Anke constantly finds a hole in or under the fence, the other two follow.  And whereas Anke is clever enough to find her way back in again to get at the food provided the other two are too dumb to follow her in and have to have a section of the fence lowered or opened for them.  I don't feel happy leaving them that far out in the field, who knows if a vixen is already eyeing them up ...