From the land of the rising sun to the landlocked alpine Switzerland

A dear gardening friend from Japan sent me this photo yesterday. The golden yellow crocus already springing out in her garden. Wonderful news. That is really a short winter compared to mine. Thank you for sending me the sunshine. It cheered me a lot despite a very snowy grey day.

I woke up this morning to a new fresh layer of snow.
I saw our backyard birds flying around in circle chasing each other, defending their territory. It was very entertaining as I stood there sipping my morning coffee and then I realised they were hungry because the feeder was totally covered with snow. One of the suet nut feeder was also missing. Probably buried somewhere under the snow.

I was told the squirrel is likely the culprit for knocking the feeder off the hook but I have never seen this cute furry animal anywhere close to the garden even though we have a few clumps of hazel nuts trees. There was once in spring a very shiny black fur squirrel entered the house and ate the dog's kibbles. He must be very hungry after a long winter and that was the one and only sighting.

While outdoor is so grey, I am glad these eye candy primroses kept on blooming.

In an enclosed area of the winter garden, their sweet smelling fragrance filled up the air. The fragrant is almost like viola odorata.

I bought 10 of them in different colours (a bit like a handful of M&M for the big kid ) and it is still a lot cheaper than seeking treatment for winter blues....

Colour therapy according to http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/colour+therapy

Follow up to where I last picked up

We are still in the depth of winter. Grey and cold but the good thing about my location is that we occasionally get that warm air http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_windpushed pushing up from the south. When this happened, it is almost like a short break from the dreary days of winter grey, with sunny clear blue sky, walking around with just a layer of clothing but this joy of tee shirt temperature is very short. The moment the sun goes down, the quicksilver will plunge down again to normal 0°C or thereabout winter temperature and life gets back to parkas and down jackets.

Took the dog for his walk and feed some ducks down at the river earlier today.


Nothing much going on in the garden at the moment. Almost everything in hibernation.
I've potted up all the bareroots roses I brought back from Italy in temporary pots until I can plant them out in the garden when the ground is workable. We have had frozen temperature for a long stretch of weeks and the pots was frozen solid. There was 2 days of föhn last week and I could see the ice thawing but it will be snowing again soon.


I also found Stanwell Perpetual left over rose bud from last autumn still hanging on despited all the freeze and thaw. Amazing.


The Pieris are busy making buds to break the winter spell.

When I was at the garden centre the other day buying soil for potting up the bareroses, I bought some primula aka primrose to cheer up my very monotonus green winter garden (actually more about cheering up my own self lol )
They came in all kinds of cheerful eye candy colours. This must be the answer to bridge the gap for colour starving souls.

Rosette Delizy breaking bud eye growth.
Nature's way revealing spring is just around the corner??


To my delight, some of my other newly bought bareroots roses are also showing some reddish cooked shrimp coloured tiny red shoots.

O joy!! Spring cleaning is looming in the air :(