It seems like in every season, something wonderful is in bloom in Italy.  Right now it is mimosa.

 

Also beginning to bloom are the camellias

I walked down a wide avenue in western Florence yesterday, where I noticed a long line of street trees that have been severely pruned in the Pollarding method, a pruning system involving the cutting of long branches of a tree, done to promotes a dense head of foliage and branches.

 

Pollarded trees look brutal against gray winter skies.