early flowers and a dead daphne

The unseasonal warmth is bringing the garden hurrying along.  The flowers on the pots of witch hazel are opening en masse, while in the ditch bed I found one early snowdrop, in the gravel a solitary iris and a clump of deep red anemone, and up by the compost heap two daffodils were full out.

I spent the day working my way along the ditch bed, since the leaves of the emerging snowdrops are lengthening by the day, and the sooner it is weeded and covered with a layer of home made compost so that I don't have to tread on it again for a month the better.  As I crouched at the back of the bed, trying and mostly managing not to kneel on any of the hellebore buds, I was relieved to be as small as I am.  There are times when it would be useful to be taller, or stronger, but for fine work among delicate new growth having short little legs and quite small feet is a definite plus.

The Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata' in the ditch bed appears to have died.  I hadn't consciously looked at it for a while, but as I pulled out goose grass seedlings and tiny, innocent looking little baby Herb Roberts it struck me that the bare twigs I was weeding among belonged to the daphne, and that they ought not to be bare.  It's not as though we've just had a sudden sharp frost that might have prompted it to drop all its leaves in shock, and while I don't know what is wrong with it I suspect it's terminal.  It has been pretty wet recently, so maybe it has succumbed to phytophthora or some other soil borne disease.  Perhaps it got too shaded where it was as the other plants in the bed grew, or succumbed to a virus.

Or perhaps it simply died of being a daphne.  They have a reputation for sudden death, and for not being the longest lived plants.  This one was planted in March 2004.  Is eleven years a good innings for Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata'?  I should very much like another, or perhaps to try 'Eternal Fragrance', but I really can't see where I could fit one in.

The grass has been growing all winter.  It would be nice to cut it, except that the ground is so wet the mower would probably bog down.  It's too late to cut the areas with naturalised bulbs anyway, as the daffodil foliage is already well up, and I'm starting to wonder if we'll see the crocus flowers at all or if they'll be overtopped by the grass.