We focus so much on flowers when spring starts to happen, we forget one important colour that is the mainstay of new growth.
It requires you to adjust the way you look at nature, and concentrate on the background colour that supports and highlights flowers.
Dog mercury in flower, lords and ladies leaves, flower-less bluebell shards, wild carrot fronds, fresh young nettles and an exploding elderberry!
Colour is most welcome after a long and drawn out winter like we’ve just had, and can look its best in a bit of sunshine.
These new growth stems from the dogwood and willow glow in the sunlight, and be picked out from quite a long distance.
These leaves with their red veins caught my eye. Sometimes the foliage of a plant is more interesting that its flower, and is grown purely for that purpose.
Either winter is obstinately refusing to leave, or spring is dragging its heels, but we all despair at the inactivity of it all!
Nevertheless, the new growth is starting to get established, as you can see in the hydrangea and elderflower above.
But the pause button is firmly pressed down, as shown by our pear tree flower buds. They have been poised to unfurl for some days, but are decidedly and tantalisingly not complying.
Only the other day I was looking out at the lime trees across the street, thinking how beautifully sculptural their bare branches were. It’s a joy to look at them in their nakedness before they become obscured by their foliage.
And yesterday morning our peace was broken by a horrid noise outside. I knew immediately what it was, the council’s tree surgeons were out busily doing their job.
I know it is necessary to keep the street trees in check, not only to stop them becoming a nuisance to the houses, growing too big to undermine the pavements, and keeping them healthy by forcing them to provide new growth and maintain their shape, but it’s always a shame to see their beauty destroyed like this.
And now we’re left with scalped stumps with their gleaming sawn branches to grace our view. All I can do is pity them with their crew cuts and watch to see if they recover sufficiently throughout the year.
It’s ironic that gardeners heavily prune a healthy sprouting rose bush down to almost bare stalks, just as they are getting going.
Yet I explain to my husband that the best blooms come from sturdy new growth, which arises from an established healthy base.
Therefore I cut away the spindly weak stems that could not support a lot of flowers, even if they are the ones that have a lot of new leaves.
The result is cruel, but I know that now the rose bush can concentrate on creating strong stems, sporting the best flower buds later.
In a month that appears to be still slumbering from winter, it’s always exciting when new growth appears.
Red robin new leaves make a boring bush interesting. And likewise with these fresh, light green leaves bursting out the top of an ordinary hedge.
And in the hedgerows life stirs with stuff that nobody really knows how to identify. I’m going to make a stab at this and suggest wild carrot.
This is how our red rose looks in February.
In summer, when she is in her full glory, she has the most sumptuous, velvety, dark red blooms, perfectly formed in the classic tea shape, a wonderful ambassador to love.
But now the only red visible is the new growth. It is strange that the red rose is used to signify love on Valentine’s Day, when these flowers have quite some time to go before they naturally appear.
The 6th of January is when you should take all the Christmas decorations down, or supposedly it brings bad luck. This is 12th night or Epiphany, when the three wise men visit the baby Jesus in the manger, and the tree’s lights are there to guide the kings to their destination.
But why is it bad luck to leave it longer than the 6th January? Is it because that is traditionally when Christmas ends?
In the past people believed that when greenery was brought indoors to decorate the house over Christmas, this also included the tree spirits that lived in them as well, and the house provided a safe haven for them during the harsh winter months.
After the end of the Christmas period it was important to release the tree spirits so they could help bring new growth in the spring. It was also thought that leaving them in the house for too long would encourage them to be mischievous, hence the bad luck.
This means we have to take down our Christmas tree and put our Christmas wreath outside. There is plenty of new growth already happening outdoors, so I would like to set those tree spirits free so they can get on with their job of supervising a fruitful growing season.
Watching nature while walking 