Spring may come early…unlike my New Year Resolutions…

Lucinda in front of the lemon tree

The weather today is beautiful. A mild day of about 18 degrees under a very blue, Western Australian sky.

The jonquils under the Chinese Tallow Tree

This morning I noticed that the first of the jonquils had burst into flower underneath the still bare Chinese Tallow tree. The snowdrops are flowering around the chilli bush, above the vincas, which have very bravely hung on through a bleak winter and around the roses, only pruned a week ago and still nestling in their very sandy soil. I will build it up with manure as their leaves start to sprout.

The chillies keep the aphids off the roses!

And around the pool the bougainvillea and geraniums are bursting into colour to brighten my day.

The bougainvillea is showing off!

In the courtyard Lucinda gazes down on a bare soil which will soon be planted with white primulas, but she is comforted I’m sure by the background lemon tree which is heavy with lemons after the generous winter rains.

The broad beans are loving the early spring sun

In the vegetable patch the snow peas are suffering, as are the dwarf butter beans. The weather has been so cold and the sun so sparse that they have complained by providing very little fruit despite the best efforts of the very busy bees and me. But the broad beans are thriving and I am so looking forward to my son’s stuffed artichokes which require the freshest broad beans in the recipe.

The geraniums are "doing their thing"under the palm trees

And so all this early spring effort by the friends in my garden has inspired me. I am enthusiastically revising my existing, but limited French language knowledge, and actively pursuing more knowledge through a great, do it yourself, course which I am thoroughly enjoying.

It was my New Year’s Resolution, yes, 8 months ago, to be able to not only read but comfortably speak, in a very simple manner, in French by March…it didn’t happen. So now, the birds, bees, flowers, budding trees and bulbs in the garden remind me of my resolution…and the inexhaustible opportunities once I can converse in a second language.

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