Little Surprises.

 The big news this week is the electrician has been! Yay!  After  months of work OT finally put in the microwave shelf ~ which he will have to adjust.  However we now have power in our kitchen & are nearly fully operational again. What's more, it cost us nearly a third less than expected because the boys had lifted out the cooktop & placed the oven on stools, ready to just be lifted straight in.  Moldings & things still to go but the big effort has been done ~ & very nice it is too.  It is super functional.  Even the MOTH has noticed.

 While we are technically still in winter with enough cold days still to light the fire, it is starting to warm up periodically bringing an extraordinary flush in my azalea bed despite the fact all my plants are still quite small.  Of course I now have to water more often & that is when I noticed it.

The first azalea I put in was a plumbago because I was taken with the deep maroon leaves & I thought it would add contrast during the months we were without colour.  Everything else has flowered constantly since it went in the ground ~ which is lovely but sort of worrying.  The plumbagos [yep, I bought a 2nd one] stubbornly refused to do anything at all, not even put out new leaf, but I wasn't fazed.  I had bought it for the leaf colour, not its flowers.  Besides the little tag on the plant said the flowers weren't anything spectacular.  Then this! Even given the photo is  washed out I though those deep maroon buds were sort of spectacular.