tomatoes are hatching!

Well. The Feo de Rio Gordo are, at any rate -- they still had their heads buried in the compost this morning but several of them have now stood up. :)

There are catkins out, and the start of the various Prunus blossom, and the crocuses and daffodils have all emphatically emerged; the snowdrops are getting on towards their end, and the tulips are unfurling their leaves.

And the building next door has some fantastic irises out front, which I am going to try to remember to take a picture of; I wanted to show them to A on Thursday but wound up in the failure mode of my route-finding magic, so we went... quite a bit... further than we needed to, while I said increasingly dubiously "I'm sure they weren't this far out..." -- but it meant we got to admire the fantastic front lawn that's also got bright pink cyclamens in it as well as the purple and orange and purple-and-white-striped crocuses and the narcissi and so on and so forth, and then when I was actually retracing my steps on the way back I did spot the irises.

The Ribes at the allotment are thinking very seriously about budburst. The fig and the blueberry on the patio are also tentatively developing delicate green tips to their fringes. I am still wearing four layers indoors, but spring is definitely thinking about sticking around.

Soon, I hope, the bats.