#primroses

March 2026

The Lenten rose (lat. Helléborus orientalis). It is found in the wild in the mountain forests of the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus. As a rule, flowering lasts for 3-4 years, besides, it does not shy away from temperatures of -6 °C🌿

🔺️It is important to remember that hellebore is a poisonous plant and contact with its juice can cause allergic reactions and burns🔺️

Purple Messengers of Spring.

It was Sunday again, and Algy saw no reason to forgo his Sunday reading just because he had happened to find a baby dragon underneath a rhubarb leaf…

The funny wee creature had been following Algy around everywhere since St. George's Day, and like most young animals it was both playful and full of curiosity about everything. So when Algy settled down among the spring flowers to read to his diminuitive new friend, the tiny dragon kept jumping up and down on Algy's book of verse, and interrupting him, which made it a wee bit difficult to concentrate on the poetry.

It had been a most exciting week altogether – the first week of the real spring – and with plenty of sunshine in calm, warm weather (which had reached a dazzling high of 18 degrees celsius on one day), many summer visitors had arrived, including cuckoos, swallows and sand martins, and many other creatures, such as butterflies and bats, had been spotted for the first time this year.

So Algy turned the pages of his book of verse, as best he could with a baby dragon hopping up and down on them, until he found the poem that he wanted to read to the wee creature:

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king, Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every street these tunes our ears do greet: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo! Spring, the sweet spring!