Spring has sprung here in Shanghai and there are lots of flowers blooming all over the place. While they aren't the cultural phenomenon they are in Washington, DC or Japan, there are quite a few cherry trees as well as lots of peach and plum trees all blooming very nicely. The Chinese are very good and quite particular about their gardening. Traditional Chinese gardens are very specifically planned so that you have good views of different plants, rocks and water features everywhere you look. They do a good job in public parks and they are some nice blooming spots in them right now. The willows and the forsythias came on first as usual. I was happy when the metasequoias have started to leaf out. For the uninitiated, these are redwood looking trees with deciduous needles. When the new needles come on in the spring they are very tender, bright green and super pretty. I hate the winter so I'm a happy man again.
Anyway, this time of year I usually reread the A.E. Housman poem about cherry trees. As I get older I suppose the lines regarding how many more springs I will enjoy have a slightly different feel to them.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Spring has sprung here in 
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