Springtime is here!!

So I promised some springtime pictures... and I managed to get a lot of them too ;)

This weekend was a beauty, the temperatures were warm... and we got to spend almost a whole day Sunday, in the garden.

A walk around a local town, showed a few springtime surprises...

There was a cherry tree in full bloom...

A few crocus and daffodils and as for my herbs... they are poking their heads up!
Today I saw some green... motherwort, lemon balm, lemon thyme, summer savoury, lavender and rosemary are looking good too!











Working in the garden scared up a frog, probably his first day out all year... he seemed a little dazed poor thing. DD was fascinated with him, and kept calling for "Fwog... tum back fwog!".
She loves stories about frogs and cats strangely enough...






Of course, I promised a picture of the Bradford Pear in bloom...
This was taken Friday, and today, the bloom is even more pronounced!









Here is a close-up of the bradford pear flowers (no, they do NOT smell good, nor do they produce pears)


I'll leave you with one of my favourite spring flowers... the daffodil.
In England, you can see huge groupings of daffodils together... all waving their head merrily in the breeze. So picturesque are they, that William Wordsworth wrote a poem featuring them!

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

First signs of spring

There are many signs of spring arriving in the yard!
We've had dandelions in the yard for quite some time...
This one is from a picture I took out in the yard a couple of months ago! Who would believe that you can see these in 'supposed' winter?
It gave some beautiful colour to an otherwise, bleak, winter scene though :)

The tiny little speedwell has also been blooming for a while. Both were somewhat early... but finally, the true signs of spring are coming... our neighbours Bradford Pear is bursting forth it's bloom... once we hit the warm weather later this week, we should see it in all it's glory! And then I will take a photo of it!

The Grackles Return

Just so you know I am telling the truth... here is an image from my front window before a certain young boy decided to do his scarecrow impression!

They were flocking around our bird feeder in large numbers... through our yard, and those of our neighbours too...

Spring is springing into life!

So I have noticed the signs of spring arriving...
there was the huge flock of geese that went overhead, heading North, the other day. I mean huge!! There were probably fifty geese in it!
The Grackles have arrived in huge numbers... obviously we're on a migration route, because they are not here during the summer... but they have been here in large numbers the past two weeks!
The cardinals are red, and I spotted a bluebird just the other day. Robins are appearing in great numbers, hopping across the lawn and cocking their heads to look for worms.
The blossom on the pear and cherry trees is bursting forth, and I have seen a lot of forsythia blooming, huge yellow stalks waving in the wind.
Finally, the season of cold will end.

Speaking of cold, does it not seem ironic that modern medicine insists that cold weather does not contribute to the catching of colds? Following scientific thought patterns it would seem that we're supposed to catch things more in summer. After all, the warmer weather would surely make the germs multiply more, right?
But if we delve into the thoughts of old Eastern and Western herbalism, looking into the properties of the common cold, and the heat/cold system of cause and effect, suddenly it makes more sense.
A cold, has so called 'cold' symptoms. A lot of mucous, fever, shivering, sniffing and sneezing. HOT herbs and spices tend to help us through it.
Might we just say that perhaps the common 'cold' is an excess of cold energy, the way the ancients saw it? And that excessive cold can exacerbate it? And that changing your diet to include HOT herbs and spices and foods to try and bring you back into balance is the very reason chicken soup and cayenne make you feel so much better?
It's definitely worth a look into, IMHO...