I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd.
A host, of golden daffodils
There I was, walking the seawall when, like so many other Vancouverites and visitors to this great city, I stopped in awe, as William Wordsworth did, to gaze upon the nodding yellow bulbs adorning the little slopes at English Bay.
Other bulbs have popped out of the ground too: snowdrops and crocuses. 
Herbaceous plants and shrubs are flowering:
- spiky yellow blossoms on forsythia;
- tall yellow stalks of barberry, also known as Oregon grape—Berberis × hortensis at the end of its flowering season and Berberis aquifolium at the beginning of its;
- more trusses in yellow or pink on rhododendrons;
- sweet-smelling mockorange, Philadelphus lewisii (or something just as sweet);
- pink racemes on red-flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum;
- tiny green-then-yellow flowers of boxwood, Buxus sempervirens. Bees will find these flowers, no matter how small they are;
- even Fraser photinia, Photinia × fraseri seems festive with its young red leaves.
Magnolia shrubs and trees are in bud, full of promise. Camellia the same, different cultivars from the ones that bloomed earlier. And then the wind-pollinated big shrubs and small trees have prepared their flowers for windy days: pussy willow, red maple,
and European ash, Fraxinus excelsior. 
Do you know the shrubby tree with trumpet-shaped pink blossoms that one could be forgiven for thinking are cherry blossoms? The shrub is dawn bodnantense viburnum, Viburnum × bodnantense. 
Ornamental flowering plums are starting to break out in tiny pink freckles. These are the very trees with purple leaves whose branches were falling across roads, fences, and lawns during the wet snowfall earlier this year, Prunus cerasifera ‘Atropurpurea’, also known as myrobalan or cherry plum.
Finally, at the corner of Nelson Street and Bute Street in the West End, a Prunus subhirtella ‘Whitcomb’ is a cloud of pink cherry blossoms. The main branch on this tree takes the shape of a question mark. Yet now, remarkably, smaller branches spread out the wealth of pink into a wide umbrella. 
It’s not long now until April 1, when The Big Picnic, the opening event of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, launches the lower mainland into another season of cherry blossom scouting,photographing, identifying, walking, and admiring. Perhaps, another chance to write a haiku or enjoy a hanami. Perhaps I’ll see you at David Lam Park for the Big Picnic. I’m leading a walk around that 4.34-hectare space at 10:30 a.m. By then the ‘Akebono’ cherry trees and the saucer magnolias (Magnolia soulangeana) will be in full bloom. See you there.
Text & photos: Nina S, Vancouver Master Gardeners