The magpies were cavoting around today like crazy – it seems spring is really coming :-).

In this warm winter we pretty much had daisies all the time on the backyard lawns…

A look through one of the side streets of Mülheim’s Schlossstrasse where you can see all the way through to the old postoffice. It’s just a typical inner-city street scene. The sign says Deliveries and when trucks of different weights are allowed to enter the pedestrian zone to make deliveries to the shops. Bikes are only allowed from 6pm to 9am – which pretty much sums up the business hours of this once busy inner city. After 6pm everything’s closed around here!

Yes, I already had posted some cactus flowers this year, but these were still of a batch which had begun blooming last December. This one’s all new, I only noticed that the second of our two Schlumbergera plants started to produce blossoms again a couple of days ago. So another round begins :-).

It’s not a very brilliant photo – but it’s the last I’ve ever taken of this maple tree, because it was sadly felled sometime last week. We have no idea why, we were really shocked when we discovered the tree stump yesterday – but it’s not the first time huge old trees have been cut down for no particular reason in this city. I took this photo last summer at the beginning of July, not knowing that it would be the last :-(.

Just Snowdrops, they’re coming up in almost every corner at the moment!

They’re not easy to photograph – it’s too dark there and the background is not ideal, but before they’re wilting I just had to give it a shot. Shame they won’t be around when the real spring starts!

Thanks to Google+, this is no more a mystery flower: this is Viburnum Bodnantense, also called Bodnant-Schneeball, Winter-Schneeball or Duft-Schneeball here in Germany. It’s a hybrid plant that was created in the 1930s in England at the Bodnant Garden. Big thanks to +Patty Mitchell who also discovered these in California and +Ruth Hochholdinger from Vienna who finally identified them!

This is the reverse view from the pedestrian bridge spanning Mülheim’s Dickswall with the stairs leading all the way up to the Muhrenkamp, connecting the two areas of the neighbourhood which are separated by a sharp drop of more than ten meters. This photo is actually from 2003, but today it looks almost the same except that the lawn on the left side of the stairs is now inhabited by some large bushes. It looks like a steep climb, but the 18 steps are worth it even when you’re carrying all your shopping from the city, because otherwhise you have to make a big detour.

Great mountains of clouds were rolling by in the east this afternoon…