Death to ground elder!

Astrantia (pink) and Lysimachia (purple leaf)

Hardy Geranium with euphorbia
(green foliage and bracts)

Spent my afternoon doing battle with the creeping roots of ground elder - I can tell I've been too busy to garden properly over the past 18 months as the evil weed is now firmly re-established in one of the borders.

One happy side effect of ferreting out the insidious roots is that it has encouraged me to review which plants merit a place in the affected border and which ones are just too woody, straggly and generally over the hill. No mercy has been shown to anything falling into the latter category - green recycling bags now await collection stuffed with scruffy purple sage (have another clump which I'll take cuttings from later to replenish my stocks), invasive lumps of lysimachia (which has great purple foliage, but is a real thug) and endless seedlings of hardy geranium which are making a bid for world domination.

Also lifted and divided clumps of herbaceous perennials like astrantia, anemone levellei, primroses and aquilegias, so hopefully the denuded border should fill up again over the coming months and show a bit more vigour.  That's the theory anyhow - hope we don't get a prolonged cold snap or another dry spring like last year...

Shifted some of the hellebore seedlings which were clustered at the feet of the parent plant - Old Mother hellebore is just coming into flower, so I know that the growing season is imminent.  Lungworts are also starting to add a welcome splash of blue and pink in addition to the snowdrops which are putting on a great display this year.

It feels good to be doing some proper gardening again - it's definitely addictive, and I get very grumpy if I can't get out there and do something.