Spring has Sprung

We may be a tad behind the rest of the UK up here in the Scottish Highlands when it comes to the arrival of Spring, however snouting around in the garden today I noticed that some of the plants are well and truly bursting into growth - how joyful!
Mind you, we could easily be hit with a week of snow which will kill everything off but at least i got some piccies of the pretty flowers


This is Saxifrage and it's absolutely plastered with gorgeous pink flowers. Plus, this is amazingly easy to grow - I got fed up planting plants one time so I simply left this one on top of the gravel, no planting at all, and it has romped away.

This next one is that dreaded Gorse. Most of the year I hate the stuff with a vengeance, it's a self seeding giant of a plant that is nigh on impossible to get rid of and has spikes that hurt at the slightest touch, and if one of those spikes really gets you it leaves a black mark that hurts for days. This stuff will pierce pretty much all body armour!

The Gunnera! Gunnera Manicata to be exact! Love it!
I used to grow this plant in a big container when we had a small garden and thought it looked amazing. I really didn't think it would survive up here right next to the coast but a day trip to Dunrobin castle proved it would. They had the stuff growing in their grounds and it was moosive, I mean the leaves were a good 6ft each.
Now we have some land I have 2 clumps of Gunnera in the ground right next to the pond and each year they are just going to get bigger and bigger - yay!
This year I am hoping to take a concrete cast of one of the leaves like *this*. I'm also going to try it with some Hosta leaves.

In the polytunnel the fruit trees have flowered profusely and it looks like we're set to have a bumper crop of Apples, Pears, Cherries, Plums and Figs.
The Bees were very busy on the trees when I took this photo and as I'm learning to work through my fear of all things buzzy I took loads of close up pictures, sadly I only ever managed to get the arse end though - oh well!