Two of our most lovely wildflowers should be blooming about now. They grow in thousands upon thousands but only in a handful of places that suit them and which have survived to the present day.
 The Snake's-head Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) likes well drained meadows which flood in winter. One such (and probably the most famous) is in the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford. It's a glorious sight to behold.
 The Summer Snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) also likes areas that flood in winter but favours marshy wooded habitats which remain boggy throughout the year. Its stronghold is along the banks of the River Loddon in Berkshire where it is known locally as the Loddon Lilly.
 Like all wildflowers (and plants generally) peak flowering can vary by a week or two or more according to the kind of year we've been having. Both the photos above are taken from more extensive entries this time last year on April 17th. and 18th. so I'm contemplating making return visits in the next few days...       

 Two autumns ago I planted Narcissus Thalia bulbs in the lawn (or perhaps I should call it a grassy area). The pure white flowers were a striking addition to the garden in spring last year and have proved to be so again this time round.
 They are translucent with the sun fully on them but just as beautiful in the half light of dawn...  

 Two good plants for dry shade. Wood Spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae) has glossy dark green leaves throughout the year and throws up luminescent lime green and yellow flower heads through spring and early summer.
 Stinking Iris (Iris foetidissima) is also evergreen though its sword-like fronds look a bit wan after winter. It's tough as old boots yet the flowers in early summer are pale and delicate of hue. More striking are the bright orange/red berries which appear in autumn and hang in clusters for months before they drop.  

 Spring flowers have been popping up all over the garden the past week or two. The days are getting longer, the weather's getting warmer (a bit) and there's been plenty of rain...

 Dorset's ancient holloways (or sunken lanes as they are also called) were the subject of my recent entry on March 26th. As mentioned I walked from Symondsbury to North Chideock via the holloway known as Hell Lane which is particularly deep and atmospheric.
 Then I followed another holloway (shown above) into the Marshwood Vale. At the start it was a farm track but further on it became so overgrown that I had to take to the fields and walk alongside it- I would have needed a billhook to proceed along the path such as it was.
 I took a particular interest in this territory because it is the setting for the classic novel "Rogue Male" written by Geoffrey Household and published in 1939. The protagonist of this thrilling yarn is an unnamed English huntsman who decides to embark on what he regards as a "sporting stalk". This leads to his capture in an unnamed country on the continent lining up an unnamed dictator in the sights of his rifle.
 Injured and on the run he makes it back to London where an attempt is made to kill him. He decides to go to ground in Dorset which he knows well ("It is a remote country, lying as it does between Hampshire, which is becoming an outer suburb, and Devon which is a playground"). Even here he is pursued by a relentless and resourceful assassin, the dastardly Major Quive-Smith. He makes a subterranean hide out in the sides of a particularly overgrown holloway in the Marshwood Vale.
 Numerous place names are mentioned in the novel and it is possible to follow the pursuit on a map. As it happens it traverses the very stretch of countryside I have known since childhood from Weymouth to Lyme Regis. When I first encountered this novel I was initially enjoying it as a good thriller then became fascinated as the plot crossed over with my own sense of place.
 Aficionados have tried to determine the actual location of his burrow and have made a number a number of suggestions (I shall not pinpoint them in case this diary falls into the hands of enemy agents). I went to one such that seems plausible, more so when I found that it is riddled with badger setts (the only place I saw them) and in the novel our hero creates his chamber by tunneling into the sandstone and earth in a similar fashion.
 So perhaps this is indeed the right spot but some of the scenes in the novel don't quite make sense geographically, it is after all a work of fiction. I think Household took the actual Dorset landscape he was familiar with and merged it with an imagined one.
 That is something I can relate to: I've been doing it in my head since I was a child.

    

 Bumblebees love the Borage-like flowers of Trachystemon orientalis. I rate it as one of the very best bee plants for early spring. It grows well in semi-shady places and becomes a useful groundcover developing large coarse leaves as the season progresses.
 It's not one of your delicate plants for genteel borders (and has a reputation for being invasive) but it's great in a rough spot in a "wild" garden.

 The earlies are in! Planted early maincrop potatoes on the allotment- four each of Salad Blue, Highland Burgundy, Purple Majesty and Blue Danube. Four more maincrop varieties to follow in the next row in a few weeks.