Suddenly I have too much to do. Such a contrast with the few weeks after Christmas when I was thrashing about wondering how on earth I could usefully fill my time. All this new activity concerns areas of the grounds, which have recently been handed back to me from the clutches of the builders. It started with two pairs of huge granite pots which I was able to fill followed by the purchasing and planting of five very large beech trees in a row in a bed which I shall in due course turn into a hedge on stilts and clip the  foliage accordingly.

This week I planted twenty two very tall silver birch in an area which was once scrub and which will now become a modest woodland garden. The space contains mature turkey oak (Quercus cerris) and ash and holly and wild cherry. The holes were dug with a JCB digger and even then it struggled to make an impression in the vile marl-laden excuse for soil which appears to be my punishment for being a lazy gardener. Each tree needed two heavy stakes and even with the digger trying to push them into the ground they were refusing to go in or just snapping like carrots. I placed manure and compost and bonemeal in the holes but if these poor birch survive I shall eat my dog. I planted more than were strictly necessary and so if half survive the effect will still be satisfactory. I don't want to grass underneath, hense the woodland approach. I see the woodland floor covered with hellebores, hardy geraniums, bergenias, silver branches of rubus, ferns and mis-shapen forms of common box threading through the scene. Masses bulb planting of course next autumn.

This area follows through to my main snowdrop area and boy! have these Galanthus suffered during the past few years. Last year covered with pallets and building stone and this year until last month,covered with a layer of sticky field soil which I eventually had removed and taken back to whence it came. They are a sad sight this year and so I am reduced to foraging in other gardens on the estate to lift and divide clumps to furnish bald areas in my snowdrop patches. To add insult to injury I turned my back for a few hours and that sometimes usefulally, the JCB had carved a winding path through my bulbs so that a stone path could be laid from a barn side door to the drive. I was shocked, staggered and speechless, in that order.

Daisy and I are relieved that the pheasant shooting is over. It does not really impinge on our lives apart from having to supply flowers and plants to the shooting lodge and farm for four months. It is good though not to have to keep Daisy shut up on shoot days for she would love to get at the gun dogs and I cannot take the risk of her tagging along with the guns and disrupting the whole shooting match. So we are back to normal, bells on in the morning 'shove off and be home by three o'clock' and she generally obliges such is the rhythm of our late winter days.