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.

This is a roundup of what happened in the garden during February. Don't forget I have just moved in and am seeing the plants grow for the first time, having to guess at what plants are from last years dead foliage and the new shoots.

Weather

There was about two whole weeks of dry weather during the month. The lawn almost dried out! Well not really - the center and right part was still quite soggy. Then it rained for a whole day and everything was saturated again.

Bulbs

Daffodils have flower buds but they have not opened yet.

There are montbretia sprouting everywhere, with leaves up to a couple of inches.

Of the bulbs that I planted, several tulips are coming up, and there are a couple of either bluebells or muscari. The photo shows one and a tulip.

The crocuses were not out, one is about to flower and …

Well this is surprising, I'd never even heard of the Periwinkle (as a plant, rather than a sea snail) and now I have a flower that looks very much like a periwinkle flower. But it is not on the plant in the recent article Maybe Periwinkle? .

Anyway first here is the flower. It is quite small no more than a centimeter across. It is the only one on the plant and there are no obvious other buds either.

So this is another spreading plant with much smaller leaves that are variegated light green and white. It is by the side of the house at the bottom of the picture below.

It is also spreading by rooting wherever it touches the soil. This one looks easier to keep under control, but only because it is more accessible and not mixed up in any other plants. Since the photo was taken I've …

I bought some bags of bulbs cheap at the beginning of January and planted them. I've been waiting for some to show. As it turns out there were many bulbs already planted in places where I planted my own, which makes it difficult to tell what is what.

The ones I planted are English Bluebells, Muscari and Tulips. I also planted a single Allium.

There are now a few shoots that I am reasonable certain are from the batches I planted.

The first look like it might be a tulip, although it may be a bit early to tell.

This also looks like it could be one.

This is the Allium. Not a very good picture of it. I partially excavated it to check up on it as I had forgotten exactly where I planted it.

Both Muscari and Bluebells look a bit like this, I am going to guess …

Some new activity to report.

Shoots of what I am thinking is a catmint. Certainly looks like a mint.

Probably aquilegia

This is growing from the plant that I believe is the Lady's Mantel.

Shoots growing on a climbing vine. Don't know what this is yet.

I've been trying to find out what the evergreen creeping plant was. This one here:

It looks like it is going to be a lot of trouble and so I've already removed a lot of it. I am sure it will grow back again though.

After doing a lot of searches an looking at a lot of pictures I've finally hit upon something that I think it might be.

So it seems to fit the description of Vinca Minor or the lesser periwinkle. From that article its features are:

• Trailing - yes
• Rooting along the stems - yes, as I was pulling it up it was clearly rooting where a stem hit the ground.
• Not climbing or twining - yes its not attached to the fence or wrapped around the branches of the nearby tree.
• Leaves evergreen - yes
• Leaves opposite - yes
• Leaves 2 to 4.5 cm - yes at the larger end of …

Here is the corkscrew hazel again. Unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice, but this is followed by two close up pictures of the catkins and a bud.

It has catkins that don't always hang downwards. In pictures of this tree on the web, the catikins seem to be different. I am therefore a little doubtful on the identification. Will compare leaves and flowers when they appear.

Here is a new bud with an interesting red part emerging right at the end. It is fair to say that this is not typical and only a few have this red end. Perhaps more will later. Update: as I discovered later this is a hazel flower.

There are some daffodils now appearing beneath the Choysia bush. Well probably daffodils, they are much smaller than the main daffodil patch.