Start of Spring 2016

Lots of plants are waking up now that the weather is warming up.

A beautiful sign that spring is here is that all the cherry blossoms start appearing. Our street is lined with ornamental cherry trees so it always looks lovely in late August-September.

Surprisingly, our lotus plant which has been dormant all winter decided to produce a little leaf in early August. It has put up another miniature one since then but will probably take a bit warmer weather to really get going. Hopefully it will manage to flower this season.

We picked up a pack of Erlicheer jonquil bulbs for cheap in winter and potted them. As you can tell by the name, they are early bloomers and sprouted really quickly by the start of August.

By the end of August, the jonquils were blooming with many-petaled, creamy white flowers.

Here are the flowers close up. These also have a very strong fragrance.

We have now been living in this place for a year! Remember one of the first posts about our Chinese jasmine? I mentioned that we had cut it back, so that it's now just in the corner.

This week, the first flowers bloomed on the vine. We have come full circle!