Spring flowers are Summer's optimists

Spring arrived today, or at least it felt as though it did, so I popped out and took some photographs to record the occasion.

The Japanese Garden, serene in the evening light;

A congregation of snowdrops, each jostling unnecessarily for space under an acacia;

Fingerlike, an orange form of hemerocallis (day lily) pushes through the earth.

Amidst the bracken and ivy, clumps of crocus brighten the undergrowth.

Aconites, fresh-faced;

And here taken by Robert, gardener in charge, with a little mud on their fronts.