I’ve spent the day gardening and now I am in a real mess – claw hands, back post-Quasimodo, cuts, scrapes, bruises, stings and a whole load more.

I brought it all onto myself because not content with finishing the planting of the bulbs that I started yesterday, I went to the nursery and bought a whole load more goodies for the garden.

In order to plant up my new stuff, I needed to get out a rotten tree trunk that had been sawn off near the base so in came the cavalry in the form of David who wellied it with a sledgehammer while I shoved the spade underneath and pushed with all my might. It came out!

Now, in its place are a hydrangea panticulata (October Bride), a Red Hazel, a tiny mahonia and it’s all been under-planted with some hellebores and cranesbill geraniums. This selection was chosen for a number of reasons – firstly, I’m rather fond of hazelnuts straight from the tree and the one with deep red leaves is one of my favourite garden plants and one that I really miss from my old house. The hydrangea was because the soil here is right for them but there is only one here already and it’s in the front garden – I love the panticulata varieties and this one, as its name suggests, flowers late when most other stuff has gone over so that’s why it’s found its way here. As for geraniums – my favourite perennial I think and hellebores light up the garden when there is nothing much else going on so they made it too.

I think it’s all going to look fab when it’s established but of course in the real world of gardening rather than the artificial one of Ground Force it takes a long time for these things to mature.

While I was working I was thinking about the phormiums – they need the flower spikes cutting off but I’d noticed there are some rather nice seedpods on them so, without further ado, one of them became today’s subject. I quite like it but I think DM will tell me off for ‘taking it out of context’ which is his current bug-bear. He really does get bees in his bonnet about things and this is the current one – the last one he used to get me with all of the time is ‘if you need a telephoto, you’re too far away from your subject’…….

You can imagine my response to that one!

Last year we were looking at a crow's nest - this year I wish I was in the Crow's Nest pub, having supper and a swiftie....