Signs of the season

At lunchtime today, we saw another monarch butterfly. We observe no more spider lilies on the way, but there are a few straggler oxblood lilies and the oxblood-lily leaves are beginning to shoot up. In tall St. Augustine we have found three sets of leaves of the ornamental anemone that blooms with a double row of magenta petals and a dark center. These leaves are very creased and deeply cut. This is an anemone de Caen and it is always the first florist's anemone to appear. Many years we see wild anemone blanda leaves first, but not this time around. The cypress vine has really taken off during the last week or so, and now there are flowers!