The grey, damp and windy weather has settled back, but the cold week of frost seems to have wiped out most of the flowers which had survived the odds until after Christmas. Now the blues, purples and reds of the salvias are definitely gone until summer and so any rare small splash of colour catching the eye gives a reminder of spring and a burst of hope. At first glance, there isn’t much to enjoy: the multiple pots of narcissi are growing and in bud, but no colour there apart from one bright trumpet too short to pick. However, just by the door the blue flowering of the rosemary is lovely and the viola Heartsease may look ragged and leggy , but the edible flowers are as cheerful as they have been all winter long.

In the back garden there is more to see with the hellebores and primroses abundant and mostly resisting the battering they are getting from the winds. While the vinca, sheltered by the fence, doesn’t seem to notice the weather at all.

The snowdrops are lovely nodding heads of white and green which we can see from the kitchen window. And when you look more carefully, there is the pink and blue emerging of the stalwart pulmonaria. Not sure there is much to be done here as a flower grower, though I am tempted to pot up some primroses so that I can see them closer up.

Meanwhile, hellebores floating in bowls is the nearest I can get to picking flowers from the garden and they are beautiful to look down on.

At the plot very little is showing – the daffodils much further behind than the ones here in pots. February seems as if it could be a very long month in the dull drizzle of today. Best antidote will be to actually get on with planting the seeds I keep meaning to plant and plan the plots so I am ready to start when the gloom lifts.