not quite spring

I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks ago, and there was an interview with a gardener who worked somewhere with a fine crocus display.  Apparently the late Queen Mother used to visit them.  The purpose of the interview was to discuss whether the crocus were flowering earlier than they used to, as evidence of rising winter temperatures, but the gardener said something in passing that stuck with me.  The garden was looking pretty good, she said, with the bulbs in flower, but still a bit drab because the grass hadn't started growing yet and still had that grey winter look.

In fact this winter has been mild enough that the grass has continued to grow through it.  We managed to get the lawnmower over the top and bottom lawns about a fortnight ago, and I was mightily relieved to have it done, before the grass could go into a spiral of being too wet to mow, and being so long it took too long to dry enough to cut.  But the gardener was right, the lawns do still have that tired, drab, wintry appearance.  Crocus have come and are now going, while the first daffodils are opening (in our garden, that is.  Other plantings containing earlier varieties have been out for weeks).  A second pink flowering cherry, Prunus x blireana is opening, slightly later than the P. mume (which is one of its parents).  But the effect is still not really spring-like.

I spent the afternoon pricking out and potting on it the greenhouse, and sowed a few seeds, but even with the door closed it was pretty chilly in there, and I gave up and came back into the house a good hour before it got dark.  Our Ginger scrabbled at the door and wailed to be let in a couple of times, but each time realised that the greenhouse was (a) cold and (b) boring and went away again.  The next time I saw him he was sitting on the warming plate of the Aga.

So even though it is mid March, and has been spring in meteorological terms for a fortnight, I shall not yet change the blog background from icy blue to green (for fresh grass) or yellow (for daffodils and primroses).  Soon, but not quite yet.