Famously, in the tropics vegetation grows swift, lush and large. The humid heat and the sun and rain predictably produce the perfect conditions for vegetation growth, and the most exotic and beautiful of flowers and plants thrive, as a result.

We've just got through yet another micro heat wave, with temperatures in the 30C vicinity, and both sun and rain, leaving the atmosphere humid and enervating. But not for the flora growing in our gardens and in the forest nearby. In fact, while 2018 gave us a cold early spring, causing everything to appear through the recently-frozen soil of winter much later than usual, late spring appears to have reversed it all.

We're seeing wildflowers and our cultivated plants in our garden (including the wildflowers we transplanted years ago into our garden from the forest) appearing earlier than usual, and maturing faster than we might anticipate.

So yesterday, as we plodded through the humid heat of street level to find some relief delving into the forest, we saw the first appearance of  cinquefoil (pontentilla) in bloom on the verges of the forest beside the trails. Daisies are still blooming, alongside hawkweed and fleabane, as well as buttercups.

But the buttercup bloom has been short and it has transitioned to the blooms turning into the little sharp-spiked 'mines' that later on in summer and early fall end up in the coats of dogs moving through them on the forest trails.

Though we took along water to offer to Jackie and Jillie yesterday in recognition of just how hot it was, they weren't really interested. Just too much otherwise to take their interest, and a cool breeze managed to make its way through the challenge of dense foliage to give us all further relief from the heat.