You too will have had surprises, but I doubt if they exceed mine. I was amazed, two days after Christmas, to find blue flowers on Ceanothus ‘Dignity’, on evergreen rosemary and on silvery-leaved Teucrium fruticans, each of which should flower from May onwards. There were even some half-opened rosebuds, not just on China roses, the ones which used to be called “monthly roses” because they flowered in almost every month of the year. Buds were unfurling on yellow floribunda roses, still in green leaf.