Follow up to where I last picked up

We are still in the depth of winter. Grey and cold but the good thing about my location is that we occasionally get that warm air http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_windpushed pushing up from the south. When this happened, it is almost like a short break from the dreary days of winter grey, with sunny clear blue sky, walking around with just a layer of clothing but this joy of tee shirt temperature is very short. The moment the sun goes down, the quicksilver will plunge down again to normal 0°C or thereabout winter temperature and life gets back to parkas and down jackets.

Took the dog for his walk and feed some ducks down at the river earlier today.


Nothing much going on in the garden at the moment. Almost everything in hibernation.
I've potted up all the bareroots roses I brought back from Italy in temporary pots until I can plant them out in the garden when the ground is workable. We have had frozen temperature for a long stretch of weeks and the pots was frozen solid. There was 2 days of föhn last week and I could see the ice thawing but it will be snowing again soon.


I also found Stanwell Perpetual left over rose bud from last autumn still hanging on despited all the freeze and thaw. Amazing.


The Pieris are busy making buds to break the winter spell.

When I was at the garden centre the other day buying soil for potting up the bareroses, I bought some primula aka primrose to cheer up my very monotonus green winter garden (actually more about cheering up my own self lol )
They came in all kinds of cheerful eye candy colours. This must be the answer to bridge the gap for colour starving souls.

Rosette Delizy breaking bud eye growth.
Nature's way revealing spring is just around the corner??


To my delight, some of my other newly bought bareroots roses are also showing some reddish cooked shrimp coloured tiny red shoots.

O joy!! Spring cleaning is looming in the air :(