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As I wrote yesterday in my In a vase on Monday post yesterday, when I was walking around the garden looking for things to pick for a vase I was very surprised to find that the yellow Crocus were flowering; as there are so few flowers around at the moment they made my heart jump with pleasure.

This morning I walked around again to see if there were any other treasures.

Yellow Crocus

It is cloudy today and the Crocus haven’t opened their petals but maybe that will mean they will last a while longer.

When I saw the Crocus yesterday I thought they were early but sometimes when I check back I find things have flowered more or less the same day – but in this case I was correct, last year they flowered on February 6th which makes them about 3 weeks early. I think this may be due to our cold autumn and early winter providing an early stimulus for growth.

Yellow Crocus with Euphorbia myrsinites

All the Euphorbia around the garden are showing signs that they are about to flower.

Euphorbia rigida

Teucrium fruticans never disappoints, it reliably flowers from November through to April

Th stripey bumble bee flitted from flower to flower, rather quickly, maybe she didn’t find as much nectar as she would have liked.

Teucrium with stripey bumble bee

Snow drops

I planted a small number (25) of snowdrops in autumn 2016, some but not all flowered last year; this year there seem to be more plus they began flowering in December.

Snow drops

Arbutus unedo

I have been worried about the above Arbutus, it has been struggling to survive since it was planted in April 2015. This winter it has put on more leaves but the number of flowers makes me think it is still very stressed and this flowering is its last gasp attempt at propagating itself.