Spring is coming!

so does my hydrangea its full of flower buds!!!!

My snowdrop shoots are peeping through and there are groups of violets getting ready to flower, lots of bulb shoots in the flower tubs, too.

I have primroses out, they only stopped flowering a month or two ago! I picked up a blown-down twig of fluffy pussy willows yesterday. I shall put them in a vase with cut daffodils when I see some to buy.
Roll on Spring!

I think that spring is on its way because I saw Easter eggs for sale in Waitrose yesterday. On another shelf they were trying to flog Christmas left overs.

Cut daffs in the shops are the first sign of spring...

New leaves on fuchsia. Bulging buds on azaleas and rhododendrons, daffodil shoots an inch above, and snowdrops. Healthy-looking buds on apple tree and birches (also on cherry until it fell down, but we have younger ones).
It's like this every January. I love it. Such a statement of winter defiance . Most will stay semi-dormant for a while.

Horrible weather here this morning as I ran out to feed the birds but when I noticed the shoots and buds that have started to appear, I just wanted to

hazel catkins out in some spots up here in n wales

Hazel catkins have been out for weeks here in Suffolk, I thought it was odd. We passed a gorse bush in full flower on the heathland today. I still have loads of roses in flower - not unusual in Kent or Hants but most unusual where we live.

One of the fuchsia in a big pot on the patio is happily blooming, and the sweet pea by the back door is still in green leaf if a bit windlown. (as am I!)

My daft apricot blooms every February, gets frosted.
End result --
No apricots

Gorse beginning to flower in Argyll too. As usual.

You know the old saying, Bags:

When the gorse isn't blooming then kissing's out of fashion.

Gorse is always in flower, isn't it?

Yesterday I got around to replacing the lobelia in a couple of hanging baskets with pansies. There were loads of baby lobelia coming through and the geranium in the middle is still growing. I suppose it'll eventually freeze hard enough to see them off.

The gorse in my garden and along the banks of the lochs here is not always in flower. It does flower for a good long time though, and is followed by the wild broom. Perhaps some people think broom is gorse. They both have yellow flowers, though it's not the same yellow when you know them as intimately as I do

Definitely different - but of the same family (pea family i suppose). I saw a translation of the Mabinogion in which the magicians made a woman out of flowers. Broom was mentioned - rubbish, if in Wales it will have been gorse.
I think the meaning is, Bags of "kissing's in season when the gorse is in bloom" (Welsh version) is that if you go for a walk with your sweetheart at any time of year you will always find some gorse in bloom, not that a single bush blooms all year.
Are you sitting right next to a blast of gulf stream bags? You always have such an early spring including frog spawn etc despite being so far north.

It does in the south, though. I suppose in the frozen north both the gorse and the lips are too cold to function

Gorse smells quite different to broom - and it's scratchy.

Gorse smells of coconuts. Broom of peas if i recall correctly. Scratchy is a polite understatement ffin

Certain things do seem to be early here, though not specially so. If naturescalendar statistics are anything to go by – many things (most) are later than what happens further south. Autumn comes early too or, to put it another way, summer is much shorter here than in many parts further south. I actually got The Woodland Trust naturescalendar survey to change something because they kept asking if I was sure I was seeing what I was reporting (early yellowing of silver birch leaves, for instance; I was sure and I sent photos). I argued that they had a preconceived idea of when natural things "should" happen and so they had set time limits in the survey. They've removed those limits now as they agreed that a scientific survey such as they are doing is about observing and noting what actually happens without particular expectations.

Another interesting thing we've found here is that even 30 metres altitude above sea level can make as much as two weeks' difference to when certain species flower.

You may find spring is earlier where you are now, jess, than it was when you were in MK. We found nights in Oxfordshire could be as cold as in Edinburgh and spring frosts as late. The west of Britain is generally milder than the east because of the greater influence of the Atlantic currents. You might find it breezier too. I missed fresh wind when I lived in the Oxon bit of the Thames and Cherwell valleys.

We should all note our first snowdrops (wild) and daffs (wild ones!) and forgspawn on here. Then we can compare. I'd love to know if my seeming early spring really is earlier than other people's.

Hawthorn, ash, silver birch budburst would be good too.

Anyone?

Do join in, folks. It'd be fun

I've just run some of naturescalendar graphs from spring 2012. I didn't do so much recording last year for various reasons. I couldn't get the frogspawn one to run but here are three results I did run:

Silver birch budburst: there were 236 recordings of this before mine
Ox-eye daisy first flowering: 516 recordings before mine
Snowdrop first flowering: 1069 recordings before mine.

It really isn't looking as if spring comes early where I am if these indications mean anything.

Tadpoles (still couldn't get it to do frogspawn) 2013: 199 recordings on Woodland Trust naturescalendar before mine.