Everything in the garden seems to have liked the warm wet weather of the last few days.  The broad beans are a little battered from the wind and some of the lettuces have suffered from slug attacks, but most things have doubled in size.  And the shades of green have changed from yellowy lime to rich verdant.

The elderflower is out in force so now is the time to pick flowers to make elderflower cordial before they go over, using pink or white flowers.  Equally important is to grab some citric acid from your chemist before they sell out.  By early June you're likely to be out of luck.  If you need a simple, tastey elderflower cordial recipe, drop me an email.

After years of battling against the weeds and losing, last year we re-did our fruit cage.  We decided that trying to cram strawberries and raspberries into the same cage was a mistake and that the weedy soil needed an overhaul.  So out went all the fruit and in came more barrows of rotted manure than I would care to count.  All dolloped on top of a layer of cardboard, which in turn was covered with a foot of straw.  Two dozen Garguette and Mae plants, both early strawberries, were then sunk into holes along with more manure and since then the cage has been left largely to its own devices.  It is now a sea of healthy strawberry plants, all dotted with white flowers, and not a weed in sight.  We just have to hope the mice don't get to the strawberries before we do.

This is the time of year when female mason bees are hard at work laying their eggs and collecting nectar for the lavae which will hatch later in the year.  Each egg is laid in its own compartment in a tube and when a tube is full of compartments it is sealed over with mud.

These bees are invaluable pollinators and I have never known anyone get stung by one.  As they don't make hoeny they don't attack you if you go near their nests and as they all work alone their is no danger of being set upon by a swarm.  If you don't have enough natural habitats for them, a pollinating bee log or bug box will do the trick very nicely.

Everywhere I turn at the moment there seems to be a bumblebee hunting for a nesting space.  This beauty, which I think is a buff-tailed queen (with the wonderful species name of Bumbus terrestris) paused for breath on our garden riddle, before continuing its search.

The demise of the bumblebee has prompted the HDRA to ask its members to record sightings throughout the summer.  If you register, you will receive some nice colour pictures so all the family can enjoy charging round the garden trying to identify them.  And they are very unlikely to ever sting you.