I was away last week at the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference (more about that later). When I left it was still winter, but on my return I saw that spring had definitely begun in my neck of the woods.

On the way home  from the airport there were blossom trees everywhere, in full pink and white bloom, and magnolias whose gorgeous, satiny pink and white flowers were bursting forth. Pic  by Christina Dibernardo on unsplash)
Camellias were still out — they always start early.

 Japonica (flowering quince), is one of my favourite spring bushes, and it was also everywhere in bloom. It always flowers in August here and it’s so lovely with pink or white blossoms clinging to elegant bare brown branches, not a leaf in sight. I’ve always loved it.

Years ago when I was on a university research excursion, we were staying for a week in a motel that looked out over a municipal park. On the first day I noticed that a gardener was brutally pruning the Japonicas — just when they were coming into bloom! Crazy! So I zipped over to him and asked if I could take some of the offcuts.  He clearly thought I was a bit mad, but said, “Fine. Help yourself.”  

So I gathered an armful and took them back to our motel and  gave a few sprigs to all my friends for their room. The wonderful thing about Japonica is that with just two or three branches it looks a bit like a brilliant Ikebana arrangement.

Yesterday  I went out to collect my dog from the people who look after her when I’m away. They’re on the rural edge of Melbourne, and so it was only in a few places that I saw exotic (non-indigenous) blossoms, mainly on fruit trees planted in home gardens. The main sign of spring was the bright splash of yellow wattle blossoms in among the grey-green shades of  the native bush.

Australia’s national floral emblem is Acacia pycnantha, the Golden Wattle, and if you’d watched the Olympics, you might have noticed that green and gold are the official colors of Australia. There are about 1350 species of Acacia found throughout the world and almost 1000 of these are to be found in Australia. But even though there are heaps of varieties, we generally just call them wattle.

“Why wattle?” you ask. It’s an old English word that comes from a method of house construction used by the early colonial settlers. They would cut branches and saplings and weave them into  wooden frames to create panels called wattles. They would then pack on mud or clay, or whatever  was to hand to make a solid wall. The process was called “wattle and daub.”

Have the seasons begun to change in your neck of the woods? And do you have a favorite flower in bloom at the moment?