Forsythia Week

Thanks to a very warm weekend with temperatures topping out at 24 degrees on Saturday afternoon as we took part in Hamburg räumt auf, a city-wide spring-cleaning tidy-up campaign on the streets and in parks, the Forsythia has got away to an early start in week 2011/14. The purebred F. 'Linwood' was a couple of days earlier off the mark this year than the mongrel types we adopted from surrounding gardens. By contrast, the Abeliophyllum distichum seems slower to blossom. It is in any case much smaller than the vigorous Forsythia shrubs. The daffodils are also in full bloom.