As the saying goes, it is often darkest before the dawn. It seems strange that just a few weeks ago my garden had been ruined by hurricane strength winds with fences snapped and blown over, furniture blown away and containers flattened.

For something like a week now, spring has sprung, at least temporarily so. The magnolia tree is out, the camellia is about to bloom and the olive and palm trees can breathe a sigh of relief.

I don't know about you but Spring is about my favourite time of year. I like Autumn too but Spring is so bright and colourful and hope of renewal. The temperature is just perfect for me; I'm not a fan of the summer really and if the weather could be 20C/68F all year round that would be nice as London gets horrendously humid in the summer and a never ending heatwave without air-conditioning anyway is not what anyone wants unless they are on holiday.

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a blog post wherein I got a tiny little Spider Plant (Coronavirus Diary 28 – Dancing in the rain).

The plant has now grown so massive and despite giving the occasional baby spider away, it has throughly got out of control as you can see below with the main plant above and out of show and beneath it a layer of a dozen or so child plants and many of those now with not just children or grandchildren.

I'm not sure how much life can be supported from one quite small plant but for now it must be happy enough.

If you look outside, you can see some miniature daffodils around a dwarf tree. These are daffodils, a spring-time flower and the national flower of Wales. They are one of my favourite and there are over 13,000 different varieties of them!