Another spring ritual attended to.  We may be a day or two out, but around mid-May we invariably visit the rurally-located Cleroux nursery to look around and make our floral selections for annuals to be planted, mostly in our wide variety of garden urns and pots, and some to be planted in our increasingly rare open spaces in our various gardens, front and back.

When were by on Saturday they hadn't yet received their shipment of begonias.  We made do with one of their thriving colourful hanging baskets to join several others previously acquired, and a few flats of lobelia, several tomato plants, basil and parsley, to join the flats of wave petunias and New Guinea impatiens we'd already acquired elsewhere.

And then, on Tuesday, off we went, back to have another look.  There were some begonia flats, but not the extensive choice we usually see there; obviously they must have had a run on these, our most favourite of all annual garden flowering plants, but we were assured there were greater numbers on the way. 

(Come fall, those we freshly purchased will join the dozens of other begonia bulbs that we always shake free of soil and overwinter in our basement in baskets, to be brought out the following spring for re-planting, most of them having already begun to sprout while in storage.)

Red, pink, white, orange and pink begonia flats made their way to our cart, along with impatiens, a dozen geraniums, quite mature dracaena, ivy and ipomoea as fillers.  Other garden pot fillers were acquired a day later, among them million bells and bacopa.

And I was ready to begin filling the garden pots!  Actually, I meant to fill only one or two large urns, one that stands on the porch, another at the top of our rock garden at the side of the house, just to get a start before the Victoria Day week-end coming up, the traditional date at which it is deemed safe from frosts to install tender annuals.

Ah, what happened was a frenzy of planting, as I started and then found myself unwilling to stop.  Not all done completely, just the major transference of floral offerings from flats to urns, but a heaping big start; the rest will be the icing on the cake.