Four days ago when we left home, the garden was green but the bushes were still half-bare.

When we came back, it was like there had been an explosion of flowers in the garden. Suddenly EVERYTHING was flowering at the same time. Bushes in the hedge, flowering quinces, ground cover plants, primroses and daffodils, cherry trees…

This profusion of colour everywhere is hard to capture in a photo.

The ground is still slightly wet with dew at 9 in the morning, but the deck is dry enough for me to put down a bean bag and have my morning meeting outside.

An actual, real concrete truck turned up today, for pouring the upper retaining wall. I’d expected the guys to be stirring concrete in buckets or something. It’s not like this wall requires a truckload of concrete. But I guess a sufficient number of small retaining walls all taken together will add up to a truckload of concrete, and with some planning and coordination it works out.

Two years ago we had to replace the incoming water pipe. The trench for the pipe went through both the retaining walls on that side of the garden, leaving ugly gaps in them.

Apparently (or so the builders told us) it’s not a good idea to build a wall on top of soil that has been newly dug up to such a depth, because the soil needs time to settle and compact properly. In these climes you ideally want to wait out at least one solid freeze-and-thaw cycle, to ensure that you don’t end up with a wall that gets deformed by shifting soil.

Last year there was no proper winter. So then we waited another year. For two years now we’ve had to live with broken retaining walls in that part of the garden. Luckily this winter we had some actual winter. And if this had been another crappy winter we would have gone ahead anyway. I am so fed up with looking at a broken wall.

Today the builders finally came to start working on the walls. This will be so great! I can start planting things above the upper wall, next to the house! And I can replace the ground cover plants around the hedge, because I know the ground won’t be dug up yet again. Hopefully.

I used to think of this corner of the garden as a difficult one. Tucked in between a west-facing wall and a porch, it is dry, and in shade much of the time. I planted bergenias here not because I like them much (I don’t – they’re loud and somehow vulgar) but because they were among the few things I could think of that would survive here.

In the spring sunshine (not yet shaded by the large cherry tree nearby), teamed up with daffodils and with the red, still-nude branches of a dogwood bush, they actually look really good. A bit brash and vulgar still, but whatever.

The ivy I had in my home office window nearly died because I forgot to up the watering frequency to compensate for the strong spring sun. And the reason I forgot it is because I barely see it these days – I have to keep the curtains drawn almost all day. An east-facing window with no shade gets very bright indeed. So now the ivy has moved to new summer quarters in the (west-facing) bathroom.

Some daffodils in the garden haven’t even gotten their buds out yet, but this one – right next to the wall facing south – is already in bloom.

I went out for grocery shopping after work and put on my lightweight spring coat because it looked sunny and warm. Shouldn’t have trusted the looks of the weather, should have looked at an actual thermometer. Because it was definitely colder than it looked and I had to walk really briskly in order not to shiver. It’s spring, but not as much spring as I keep wanting to believe.

Three deer lazing around in the spring sunshine in the garden. Clearly feeling right at home here.

Daffodil shoots are appearing in places where I wasn’t expecting them. I guess I must have bought a pot of daffodils last spring and then just plopped down the bulbs in some random place when they were finished. Wouldn’t be the first time.