Intermittently all day it has been rather pretty with the sun shining on the snow, and surpassingly foul with deluges of slush and hail.

The poor daffodils took a bit of a pasting overnight, but being hardy Argyll flowers they had recovered by this afternoon.

Narcissi everywhere in the garden.

One solitary snowdrop which has suddenly appeared by the fence – I’ve never seen one in our garden before and actually there aren’t that many in this area.

Some pretty flowers which grow in the drive every year and which someone told me were windflowers.

Also – just as I had given up on them – the slimies (frogs) have arrived in the pond as usual and are mating away like crazy.

But down at house/loch level the daffodils are struggling into bud and a few crocuses are coming out around the front door (they have a struggle to survive because the squirrels keep nipping their heads off).

A hundred miles south of here where my Mum lives, spring has definitely arrived as per the photo she sent me this morning.

But here in the highlands winter lingers a bit longer – it is not unusual to see snow on Bheula at the end of April.

These were some of the views… This is a great medium length (8m) walk and all on good paths – a fair bit of uphill though.

Although it was so cold today – I am still seeing some signs that spring may be on its way. Crocuses and narcissi are struggling to poke their green shoots through the ground and yesterday R and I heard a woodpecker hammering in the woods. Still plenty of time for heavy snow and storms though – I learned not to count on spring arriving early here the year before last when winter came back with a vengeance in March and killed all the blossom on my fruit trees.

R and I had been going to climb Beinn Lochain today, but the cloud was down at about 350m and we wouldn’t have got much of a view, so instead we set out to find a path we knew existed but had never walked – between Lettermay and Cormonachan. We found the path and set off. By 8:30am it was quite warm and spring like. Every ditch, pond and puddle was packed with busily copulating frogs and slimy with spawn. After a while we heard a great honking noise and a huge V of birds passed overhead heading north – I’m not sure whether they were geese or Whopper swans.

Primroses were out on the banks, and there was a general ‘green’ smell of growing things. When we got home, I noticed that the first few narcissi are out in our garden.

The heron is back on the pond daily (I wonder why that would be??) and the badgers are back in the early evening. So spring on the Donich has now officially arrived.

The crocuses by the front door seem to be surviving both the frost and whatever it is that keeps trying to eat them anyway.

Winter Pond in the morning

Spring Flowers in the afternoon

There are a few catkins on the trees, the first spring flowers are out, and today R and I heard the first woodpecker. If last year is anything to go by, within a week or so they will be drumming throughout the woodland here. They’re not often seen (though very occasionally we get one at the bird table), but they are certainly noisy.

On the subject of noisy, our jays are also starting to squawk at each other, trying to get a dominant position to hold on to this territory – which must be a very sought after one considering how many nuts we put out. The first year we were here there was one pair which must have had a lot of surviving offspring, because at the moment there are no less than six. I do like them but I hope we don’t end up with 12 this year because they will eat us out of house and home. We also counted six red squirrels at one time in the feeding area yesterday.

The picture is of a rather nice hellebore which is now out in our garden.

Not so sure about the crocuses coming up at our front door however. Last year they were just opening up when some creature ate half of them and snapped the heads off the others. I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect one of our many resident red squirrels.

But this morning I was proved at least partially wrong. I went for a walk round the waterfalls and it was surpassingly foul at the bottom of the hill, a sort of mixed rain, slush and hail with a stiff breeze blowing it right into my face. By half way up it had actually turned to snow and was starting to lie – and it was right there that I saw the year’s first frog spawn in the stream by the side of the path. Remarkably, this is one day earlier than when I saw it for the first time last year.

So we can expect our froggy friends to turn up in the pond soon – although their nemesis Mr Heron has already taken up position and may have already had a couple of early arrivals. Perhaps an example of ‘the early frog gets caught by the heron’.