Monday and Tuesday at Coombe Wood

MONDAY

Sunlight through young copper beech leaves

Crumpled petals opening wide in the sunshine

Tiny pink flowers

Draped wisteria

Wisteria close up - unexpected colours

Deep pink 

Hop plants growing fast

White bleeding hearts against dark red tulips

 Aquilegia

Tiny bright flowers 

Azalea/rhododendrons in the sunlight

Small baby-pink lilac

These could be Berberis flowers - but almost every time I think I've got a name right I find out later that I was wrong so please don't take my word for it!

I'm confident that these are alliums though

There was a white one of these earlier on

Here come the love-in-a-mist buds

Wild flowers in the long grass

Pastel pink aquilegia

Blue aquilegia

I think the following plant smells revolting. I noticed a terrible smell near them at the Isabella plantation the other day. It reminded me of the smell of sweaty rain jackets when you're squashed next to someone wearing one on a bus. I was looking at this plant yesterday and suddenly realised that's where the horrible rain-jacket smell was coming from.

Part of the winter protection for the banana plants has been removed

The other day this plant looked as if it had been draped with lace. As the flowers have opened more they have become much more robust and it looks more like the plant has been draped with crochet

These purply-red leaves seem to have grown several inches each time I see them

Little sprays of flowers float above russet leaves

Little tufty flowers

Floaty seeds have wafted along and caught on the aquilegia stems

Blossom on the plant that has tiny star shaped seed pods

Lily of the valley

Gorgeous pink buds opening and becoming big billowy white flowers with pink tinged centres

Colour and delicious scent lining the pathway

Smaller pink buds and white flowers - these have frilly edges

Peaches and cream azaleas

Claw like buds lighten as they open

Bright closely packed blossoms

I thought this was a cone - it's more open and seems to be dropping pollen

 Some of the acer flowers are already becoming winged seeds

Thicker petals on these flowers

 So many different white flowers

More white flowers that begin as pink buds - these are tiny

 White bleeding hearts

Dainty fluffy white florets against thick dark leaves

 Little stamen-filled orange flowers 

The peony buds are showing - soon to be marshmallow pink flowers

Little white flowers

The wide borders are springing to life

Extremely tall allium - I wonder if the slender stem will hold the weight of the flower

More bleeding hearts

I love this colour combination - so many colours on one plant

Some of the tulip petals are falling but the flower beds are transforming rapidly as forget-me-nots are springing up so fast.

Pink forget-me-nots.

Glimpses of colour through the blue forget-me-nots

I met a lady with a child - I have seen them regularly. She told me that a friend's child had eaten a berry. The gardener was standing on one of the big piles of compost or woodchips tying to get a signal for his phone so he could find out how serious it was.

I found it very difficult to leave without knowing whether the child was OK but there was nothing I could have done to help by staying

I took a few photos of the ferns uncurling 

As I photographed the ferns a stream of walkers passed by altering the colours in the background quite drastically

Little orange flowers

Sage of some sort - I think it's Jerusalem sage but you know what I'm like with my plant names

One of the little flower beds has several different kinds of pink tulip in it - big multi-layered flowers, some cup shaped ones, some with pointy petals

Bulrushes with thready seeds sparkling in the sunlight

TUESDAY

A visit to Coombe Wood with my sister (the sister who doesn't live locally). I didn't take many photos - and some were very similar to the ones I took on Monday but here are two. These flowers have popped out quickly - they were barely showing the other day

and I couldn't resist another photo of these bleeding hearts against the dark tulips

Thank you very much for joining me