Many flowers will grow in my garden

It's official. Having my own home has given me a gardening bug.

Not a really obsessive, I'm going to start joining horticultural societies kind of bug, but it's quite clear I'm enjoying myself. The first big sign is that I'm thinking I really need to find out the names of all the plants I've got!

And that's because so many of them are looking really promising at the moment, and it's getting hard to say 'that thing at the back of the house' while describing how 'that thing' is absolutely covered in buds, a couple of which have finally revealed the colour inside - a rich, very dark pink. I'm informed by the most reliable source to hand (Dad) that it's a camellia.

I also know I have five roses, of at least three different varieties. A total of three of them appear to be having the time of their lives at the moment, which I can only hope will translate into more stunning blooms.

Apparently I have three grevilleas in the front yard - one has begun to produce red flowers, one has just started turning pale orange and the third is yet to commit itself. Nearby is a tall bush that is now displaying tiny clusters of rust-red flowers amongst green foliage that has occasional tinges of yellow.

On the other side of the front yard is an overly large tree that will have to be lowered a couple of feet lest it try to destroy my gutters. But before that, Dad assures me it's going to flower in truly spectacular fashion. Seems mine might be orange. No idea what it's called though!

A tree at the back is starting to produce white blossoms. I actually can't remember if that's the plum tree or if it's the other one! And finally (for now), one of the larger plants in my courtyard has little speckles all over it that I know are going to turn into blooms, and in one tiny spot, down towards the bottom, they already have. Also white.

I am truly excited by the potential of all this. My gardens don't look great yet by any means - the 'lawn' is really a pile of weeds that I took one step towards killing off this morning, quite a few more plants need trimming (I already attended to half a dozen in late winter), some scraggly things really should be got rid of to provide more space to their neighbours, I have two samples of a plant that Dad tells me is now a declared noxious weed and there are offspring of the tree I cut down that simply have to be poisoned out of existence (otherwise in 10 years time there will be 2-3 trees attempting to grow out of my bedroom wall)... but by golly there's enough good things here to make my first spring a joy to behold.