Harbinger

It is, by now, raining again, and quite probably snowing in the mountains.  But we have some grape hyacinths in flower in the beds by the front steps - together with snowdrops, I always think of them as harbingers of spring.  I've forgotten why snowdrops apparently don't grow easily here - it's not that they're like peonies, and need frost (on checking, it seems to be that they don't survive if the soil around them dries out, which it doubtless would do, regularly).  These, however, have come up each year since I planted them.  In other horticultural news, some packets of Morning Glory seeds arrived today, which, if I can climb down at some point to the back of the fence - nay, ugly impermeable barrier - that the owner of the house in the street below has erected, I intend to scatter in the hope that they'll climb rampantly up it: guerilla gardening.