Spring and sprung

We keep having hints of sunny days behind the grey clouds, and no one at all is complaining about the rain showers we keep having when the washing has just blown dry. The grass has finally grown and is beautiful and green, a colour we've been very deprived of lately, and has been mown!
My hellebores, the winter roses, are fabulous.

And the violets know it is spring. This has to be my favourite shade of purple, and popping up amongst the green leaves they are just gorgeous, although computer monitors don't do them full justice and make them a paler shade than they really are in the spring sunshine.

We've had breezes, and strong winds, but our predominant breeze brings the perfume of the daphne bush which is under the shelter of the pergola, and quite enormous in size.

Here is the result of some very strong wind. The poor black wattles are past their use-by date and this one lost some branches onto the cottage. My new car was called into service to be the tow truck, although John, our right hand man, is pretending it's all man-power!