Stop and smell the Flowers

So today is 1st of May. Where we are here in South Africa, I don't know of any fun activities celebrated as they do celebrate 1st of May in the Northern Hemisphere countries, except Worker's Day. And that is mainly celebrated by the Unions and ANC supporters. Nothing fun about that for me. Attend speeches and marches and such. Ugh....

Luckily though, since 1st May this year is a Public Holiday on a Sunday, we luckily get off tomorrow to celebrate Workers' Day all over again. Lucky us hey? Not sure if this happens anywhere else in the world (but in South Africa, any PH on a Sunday results in Monday following being another Public Holiday...let me know if this too happens in your part of the world please...)

Anyway, today is a lovely Autumny day. The sky is overcast with coolish weather and sun teases us to come outside...now with warm rays, and then chases us back inside again as it becomes cooler...

I am supposed to be doing some studies...have my first exam in about 16 days and first week of the new month is always dedicated to month end deadlines and overtime...but I'm being lazy and procrastinating on this lovely 1st of May...who in any case studies on such a beautiful day???

Even though we are now, what, 1 month officially into Autumn (using Equinox 23 March as change of seasons) my garden is not yet showing any bad effects of the cooler weather. Although admittedly, our garden only dies when we get bad frost in the winter months....Here is a photo or three of my garden with the beautiful Bougainvillea still in full bloom...pretty striking I think...

(Yes the technical quality is pretty awful as at this time of the day there seems no angle I can take the photo without the sun glinting off the statue...but the idea was to show you how big a bush it is at this stage...I'll post again say mid July and then you'll see just dried twigs...)

Even though winter hasn't hit us yet, I think my plants get confused with the ever fascillating weather sometimes - this Iris has started blooming and to the best of my knowledge they only bloom in my garden either mid July or early Spring....it is a lone warrior though...

The lone iris on the left and in detail below...

Yesterday I went to the nursery to buy my friend a gift for her birthday. My eldest went with me. I love just browsing through the nursery, looking at the wondrous colours of the roses, stopping to smell them. I don'tlike a rose without a beautiful scent, so I smell each and every one before I buy one...my eldest said people would look sideways at me, with me sniffing the roses, I said "Not worried, that's their problem, not mine...Im here to smell the roses...."

I hope you get to smell the flowers this week, be you in Spring or Autumn countries....

LG