The shrub near the back door is beginning to flower with lovely yellow four petalled flowers growing directly off the old twigs. I am guessing that it is a Forsythia. From reading about them, I seems like it is a fast growing bush and so it is not in a very good location as there is not a lot of room for it. I already cut it back a bit as it was overhanging the path, now I know that it flowers in spring I wish I had waited until after the flowers had finished.

A single flower from the other periwinkle or vinca. I've been looking at plants in the garden centers and one with leaves of a similar size to this are labeled as Vinca major. So this one could be Vinca major and the other with the much smaller leaves be a Vina minor. I thought that the V. major had hairs around the leaf margin, but maybe that is not necessary.

First daffodil to flower. May have been a day or so ago as I was away for a couple of days.

I was over in Shropshire, where the daffodils are out almost everywhere, far more advanced than here.

Remember how I thought that the catkins on the hazel did not look much like ones that you typically see in photos? Well that is because they were not fully developed, a couple of days ago I noticed that some of them had opened out and become opened out hanging down and blowing freely in the wind.

In the photo not only can you see the catkin, you can also see the tiny pink flower.

One thing that I want to have but doesn't appear to be in the garden is some snowdrops. So I bought a little pot of them and planted them.

They don't like to dry out and there is no chance of that here. There was water at the bottom of the hole that I dug for them. I hope of course that it is not too wet for them. Perhaps there is none already because they just don't survive.

I planted them admittedly on the "wet side" (although there is not too much difference on the borders) but they do get some sun there.

Here they are in their pot.

And here they are planted.

I bought a purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria 'Robert') from Cowell's garden centre. These are rather lovely plants that attract lots of bees and I am hoping that they will do well in the very moist conditions in the garden.

Here it is in its pot.

I eventually decided to plant it between the cordyline and the second pheasant berry bush. Yes, there is not much to see at the moment.

I can only recall ever seeing one of these in the wild, which when I lived in Carshalton. I took a couple of pictures at the time (2012).

I received this newsletter showing the bright pink of a hazel flower. Seeing it I realised that this was exactly what I saw and took a picture of earlier.

Here is a more recent clearer picture.

The first crocus flowers have appeared. The yellow one is in the trough container that I brought with me. The blue/purple one is one of the ones that was already in the garden.