Spring at Last, Spring at Last....

...thank God Almighty, it's Spring at last! Of course, no one knows how long it'll stick around. Some years it hangs around for a few weeks, reverts to winter for a month, jumps to summer for a few days, then moves on to late fall. Just have to enjoy it while it's here.

Even though I have no experience with gardening in the ground, I do have a good seven year's experience gardening in pots on a balcony. Every year our balcony explodes into color with stunning marigolds, double impatients, roses, pansies, clematis, jasmine and - naturally - red and pink geraniums, which are practically required if you have a balcony in Paris.

Some of these flowers and plants survive the winter -- we haven't had to re-pot our geraniums, for example, for the past four years -- but inevitably, every Spring we have five or six pots to fill and we head down to the "flower district" to check out this year's hot blooms. (When I say, "head down to the 'flower district' I mean that literally; we happen to live smack in the middle of it. We can see the sidewalk displays at the while sitting on our living room sofa, which is pretty cool -- gives the illusion of living near a park.)

Anyway, I was heading home this afternoon and all the gardening boutiques had their flowers outside. They were absolutely dazzling in the sun. I don't know who wouldn't have smiled at the sight of them, but it wasn' me. Automatically, I began thinking about which flowers we'd put on the balcony this year. And then it hit me: I don't have to limit myself to balcony flowers...I can actually consider the cherry trees and raspberry bushes and the host of seed packets and bulbs that are on display too!

Happy day!