I generally like the photos in a blog post to have some kind of unifying theme that makes sense... but so often when I have categorised them, I end up with a few random ones that don't really fit, a kind of photographic 'junk drawer' as it were.
Here are a few from Harlow Carr Gardens: some colourful willow stems, bundled and drying, next to a living willow arbour, just beginning to get its leafy covering.
Spring flowers - daffodils, wood anemones, primroses - provided a pretty backdrop for a song thrush, hunting for tasty morsels in the earth. Song thrushes used to be plentiful when I was a child and nowadays I hardly ever seem to spot one; their numbers have declined alarmingly in the UK.
There's an area with a bird hide and bird feeders and I popped in to see if I could spot any interesting small birds. I'd seen a wren hopping around, though couldn't get a photo, and there are always friendly robins around the place. All I could see was a very colourful cock pheasant. Perhaps he'd scared the little birds away, or more likely some talkative humans had disturbed their peace. (I can never understand how people don't know you should be quiet in a bird hide!)
Also at the bird feeders, a wily grey squirrel. He hid for a while in the shadows and then scooted up a tree, along a wire and hung upside down to fill himself with bird seed from a feeder. Clearly very practised at that manoeuvre!
One of my favourite spring bulbs is the trillium. There are lots of different varieties, all characterised by three petals. This one was a clean, neat looking white variety, very attractive.
In the woodland, ferns are unfurling. They always remind me of a nest of snakes! (Not that I've ever seen a nest of snakes!) I can remember learning the complex life cycle of ferns in biology at school. Absolutely fascinating.