Wot no camelia?

Culture shock continues unabated. "Normally" at this time of year the grass is brown and the hedgerows full of common-or-garden pink camelia. Instead zillions of white snowdrops are poking through the luminous green grass. The snowdrop previously featured in this blog in November(!) 2009, when we found a small patch of them in Jomyoji English garden. I wonder in which months the camellia will flower here in ole blighty.

We also "normally" have about 6 weeks of almost no rain at this time of year. I'm not sure, but this year so far there may have been about one day when it did not rain. That isn't to say it rains all the time, and indeed the rain is much lighter than Japanese rain. For example, we've done quite a lot of running and cycling have only got properly wet while running once and not at all while cycling.