Two blues....

A perfect spring day, warm and sunny, and the air sweetly fragranced with cherry-plum and winter honeysuckle. The garden has swathes of daffodils, sweet violets, early dog-violets, lesser celandines and grape hyacinths.

Most of the grape hyacainths are the well known Muscari armeniacum, but we have two clumps of the more exotic Muscari latifolium. The bottom two thirds of the flowers are coloured a very dark blue and appear near black in certain lights. Each spike is topped by a tuft of striking bright blue sterile flowers giving it a two-tone effect. Its leaves are broader and flatter than most other grape hyacinths and they tend to wrap themselves around the stem of each flower.

The warm sunshine brought out quite a few insects including the first brimstone and comma butterflies of the year. There were two new moths in the moth-trap this morning - an early thorn and a chestnut.

I was also delighted to confirm the presence of toads in our largest pond. I'd heard their soft chirrups a couple of days ago, but hadn't been able to see any. Today I got a good view of a young male (see here). Last year we had a number of males turn up, but no females. This evening I shone a bright torch in the pond and counted at least nine males and three females. Looking forward to toadspawn now - the first time ever!