Blossoms and birds - take two

Clematis Montana

Good morning Peeps, I hope you are all having a good week. Thanks so much for all your very kind comments on my last few posts, also welcome to me new followers.

No craft to share today, I am deep into Tattered Lace samples which I can't share quite yet, but keep your eyes open for some fabulous new products coming up on Create and Craft TV on 14th/15th of May. So instead I thought I would share some more photos from the garden which I took bank holiday Monday when we had an hour or two of lovely sunny weather in the afternoon.

Wisteria Brachybotrys Shire Kapitan Fujii, the beauty of the blooms and habit never fail to wow me

Clematis Montana, two years ago I cut this one right back as it was looking really bedraggled with little flower, last year it did nothing and the family were convinced I had killed it, this year it proved them all wrong and looks glorious in the corner of the secret garden (with a fence much in need of replacement)

Polygonatum odoratum, it's an amazing plant as it comes from nowhere to three feet high in just a couple of weeks. Supposedly it has good healing properties for arthritis and skin conditions and widely used by the Chinese

Syringa vulgaris - or good old common Lilac, this one is always the first to bloom and has a glorious scent, especially in the evening - I took this photos a couple of days ago, just look at the blue sky, ever since it's rained

Looking across the back of the orchard at a few of the apple tree, the pears are all at the front and had an abundance of flower this year, note the end of a yellow lab in the bottom left corner

And on this one I seem to have got the back end of a black lab, they get everywhere. One of the Choisya's or Mock Orange Blossom, this one is only a couple of years old and looks like it will grow into a beauty, it's another with a lovely scent

And I thought I would also share a few of our garden birds.............

Green 'woody' woodpecker, he's been living with us for a year or two and last year introduced 'the wife' and together they raised a family

Chaffinch - last year we had a family of them and am hoping they have nested in the garden again, he's been pretty frantic lately so it looks as though there is a family somewhere

Honey Buzzard - no I didn't take the photo, they fly very high and my photo skills are not that good, but I wanted to show you what we see on an almost daily basis. They are not native to East Anglia, but about three years ago we sighted them over near Peterborough and last year they were regulars overhead so we think a family of them have settled close by

Bullfinch, we have so many of these in the gardens and hubby moved one of the feeders to just outside the kitchen window a couple of weeks ago to see if they would use it and it didn't take them long to feed from it, apparently quite unconcerned that it was so close to the house and people

Blue Jay, very private birds and always hesitant but they do venture out to feed on the seeds the smaller birds throw out of the feeders, a few weeks ago we had five feeding all together, quite a rare sight

And finally Molly the Moorhen and chicks.....yes lots have names !! We have several families living in and around the top pond and they always feed across the paddocks and with the chickens. They are such timid creatures flicking their wings and run off at the slightest noise so getting a photo takes forever and this one is from last year. One of the most distressing things I ever saw was a couple of years ago when a family were walking their young and a Kestrel swooped down and airlifted one of the chicks away, the poor mother Moorhen stood out the the paddock all afternoon squawking and crying

I hope I've not bored you with so many photos, but I so love this time of year with all the rebirth of Nature and can never resist taking photos, albeit it not always particularly good ones. The May/Whitethorn is just showing a hue of colour, we have a whole hedgerow of it along the top paddock so you can be sure there will be some photos of that.