Some years ago, when both my parents were still living in Dorset, I took the opportunity when down there to visit a specialist Camellia nursery in a nearby town and to buy four really beautiful Camellias: one with white flowers, one with pale pink flowers, one with dark pink flowers and one with red flowers. Usually the pale pink flowers are the first to emerge each early Spring but this year they started to emerge about the time we had bad snow and freezing weather and so I haven't seen any more flowers from that bush. (Having said that I've just noticed that the bush has lots of buds showing, so I assume that they are just late this year.) The next set of flowers to emerge, however, are the dark pink ones and I looked out the window this morning and decided now was the time to take some pictures of them. There's lots of buds on the plant too. Lovely.