After we moved into this place, one of our friends told us to wait for a full year before we start any gardening work. I suppose I know what he meant by words, but only with a very shallow understanding about the true meaning of it.

In the past few months, talking about summer, we have been pretty much in a frantic status of reacting rather than acting. Peach picking (including dealing with falling peaches), then grape picking (including fighting the birds), lawn mowing (cutting weeds rather than grass), trimming overgrowing chameleon rose bushes, sweeping falling tree leaves….Honestly I don’t think we have a complicated backyard at all, but it just comes one after another, and never stops.

Now it’s the turn to pick lemons. It seems to be another a few weeks of job to get all the lemons off the trees. Yes, hundreds, and hundreds of them. We are happy to drink lemon water every day and stick lemon wedges into a beer bottle every time, but how much can we use?

Two months ago, I was weeding a small patch outside the house near the laundry window, I found a new territory covered by strawberry plants. In May, I tried to put some winter bulbs in under that shady tree, I found there were already quite a number of mystery bulbs growing under the ground.

There are quite a number of grass-looked iris growing here and there, and I can’t wait to find out what colour they are. I found some blooming wild ones in front of the house. So pretty with purple and yellow colours.

Do you want to know what was the best finding ever? We have a camellia tree! Yeah, at the far end of the fence, a corner that we don’t go. I have been dreaming to have a camellia tree for a long time. Now it appears like a magic. I guess because it is very short and surrounded by the invasive ivy, it didn’t catch my attention for many months (now I know what our friend was talking about). It is flowering now, red ones, small but pretty. It is not quite as glorious as those I have seen in front of other people’s house, but it is still very impressive.

In this garden, I kind of explore the new thing every day. Now I don’t even dare to imagine what else would come up in the spring.