The Language of the Flowers

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On 15 February 1996, Ian and I planted a magnolia tree in our garden at Fernenland, St Arnaud, to mark my fiftieth birthday.

Not too many years later, when we quit Fernenland for Gerolstein, we took the commemorative plant along. But it never seemed to thrive, and for ten years and more it gave us just a display of leaves and occasionally a shrivelled frostbitten floral bud..

Finally, now, with my 64th birthday hovering in the near future, the tree has burst into flower ..

I wonder if it's trying to tell me something,,