Duels and New Beginnings

The sun welcomed us again today and it seemed a shame to spend the day indoors so this afternoon we made our way to Dawyck Botanical Garden for a walk, a cup of tea and some flower seed purchases. Some of the rhododendrons have already begun their flowering although this is a bit optimistic of them given the present weather.

 One of them had begun to unfurl its flowers but was caught out by the snow and the icy conditions

which made for a pretty picture although I suspect it won't do the flowers a lot of good. It was great though to see that all kinds of springlike conditions have overtaken the garden.

One such sign was the fierce duel these two male pheasants were having with each other. In the winter cock pheasants live happily together and in fact they seem to prefer to spend that time in each other's company but come the spring and the time to find a hen and plan a family and they become competitors  which can result in some violent fights. We could hear this one continue long after we had lost sight of the birds themselves.

 In some areas where the sun doesn't reach there was still plenty of snow to be seen but

in other areas the snowdrops were enjoying seeing the light again after having been covered in it.

All in all we had a beautiful walk but now that we have returned home and I'm sitting in the studio typing this blog it has clouded over and snow is coming down again. Oh well, this is Scotland! And we did make the best of the sun!