This certainly rates as one of the most weather-unusual springs I have ever experienced in my years of gardening. Usually, by now, our garden pots and urns would be starting out with bursts of annual colour crowding their interiors. Not this spring. Usually we 'jump the gun', as it were, getting our annual planting in before the May 24 week-end, when usually it is considered safe from frosts to set tender plants in the garden.

We've got some warmer weather on the horizon. And we hope that finally we'll be able to plant. Even if we don't the perennials, as they continue to erupt out of the soil will eventually fill in the still-empty places in the garden. But it's in the garden pots and urns that the annuals usually get to show off their ornamental, ever-blooming presence, and we've been tardy this year.

Magnolia tree beginning its bloom!

The garden soil, peat moss and sheep manure are all there, waiting to fill the pots, but the opportunity is missing. Yesterday, during our ravine walk in the forest we kept coming across light showers, and on our return home the skies opened up again with seriously drenching rain. And so far, today, it's been raining again, no doubt sending shivers of dread down the spines of those people whom Dame Fortune has failed to bless, with lakes and rivers over-running their banks and into their homes. Spring planting would be the very last thing on these folks' minds.

Everything in the gardens is later erupting out of the soil this year. But when we see them, we feel redeemed, excited at the prospect of another blooming garden and the sensual, aesthetic pleasure it grants us through the summer months. We could use some dry, sunny days, and we're assured that before many days have passed, we'll have them. We can only wait and see.