The Footsteps of Spring

In an equatorial island like Singapore, where there's only summer and seasonal monsoons, how do you know when spring has arrived? Well, for one thing - when the onions in your kitchen start to bring forth young shoots, you can be sure spring is near...

This year, the Chinese Lunar New Year (CNY) is early. Just after celebrating Christmas, many households are again busy doing their annual spring cleaning, clearing old furnitures, decorating and furnishing their homes with new ones.

For us, we've decided to buy less CNY goodies since most visitors only eat a little and we'll end up consuming them ourselves. However, making our home clean and welcoming is still top priority, and for this we again enlisted the help of these gorgeously sweet Gladiolus, just like last year.

See how beautiful the pinkish flowers array themselves? In a few days' time, the rest of the buds will blossom, turning our humble living room into a bright and happy place where friends and neighbours meet in delightful conversations.