Greetings from Liverpool, where the tufts of Spirea that we did not get round to cleaning up from by the driveway fence are now sprouting new leaves and celebrating the Spring that is round the corner.

The heather is a nice sight each morning when getting into the car, a good patch of purple heather, and a smaller patch of white. Just by them there is also a small patch of crocuses, that seems to have been just ready to burst into bloom most of the month, but never quite made it, arrested by the cold weather that burst upon us at the start of the half term week. There are plenty of crocuses around in grassy banks around Sefton Park, and in the grass verges around Queen’s Drive. There are also daffodils dotted around the city, including some in our garden, but most of the larger displays are still just green shoots massed in the grass.

There are signs of Spring elsewhere in the city. Our friends off Green Lane have a big mass of Kerria in their front garden, beginning to open up its yellow blooms. There are a few trees around Sefton Park with catkins on display, and the bushes at the end of Greenbank Lane are covered in delicate white and pink blossom.

Our little tree with the pink blossom has had a few early blooms ever since the first appeared last November, but most of them are still yet to open, swelling large for the display that is about to come.

We have a few primroses, some miniature irises, and some anemones nestling in the garden, along with the crocuses and narcissus, whilst the Garrya and the Eucalyptus trees have been green the whole month long.

Mike Pendray
3 March 2003