The weather pattern is indeed extremely unusual also here across the Atlantic in northern Scotland, e.g. our last snow melted clear of the garden's car park allowing vehicular access only on Wednesday last. Followed by a warm south westerly wind stream down in the bottom of the Strath [= valley] we are now all clear but on the mountains behind us we learn that Scottish ski centres have the fifth best snow cover anywhere in the northern hemisphere, just behind that of Whistler in Canada with fresh snow last night. Today Sunday we have had, as yesterday, 22 C and not a cloud to be seen anywhere. Landscape type Daffodils in the car parking area are now about 4 - 6 inches above the grass solum depending on variety, no flowers obviously yet but no prospects of any reticulate type Iris even showing green at ground level as I found when tidying up a bed of I.delavayii and I.typhifolia this afternoon, nothing elsewhere such as I. clarkei, decora, etc either. At this latitude hardly surprising but Spring is certainly getting into gear. Lilium hansonii, as usual is first up, just, with L. lancifolium var. fortunei almost at ground level, I couldn't resist a wee peak to see. These two are the usual suspects here for first off the block amongst the lilium. Happy gardening and even rounding up cats for those with that problem too. Iain -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 143312 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len/ The Professional version does not have this message