家の前の道はこのクロースに住む住人たちの私道になっていて、そこに小さなグリーンがあるのですが、まだ小さくて細い木が何本か植えてあります。このクロースには７軒の家が建っていて全部２０１５年に建ったので、木も多分５歳くらいなのかな。その木に少し前にお花が咲いて、桜みたいだなと思っていたのですが確信はなく、今日フラワーファインダー（写真を撮るとアプリが何の花か教えてくれる、という便利なものがあることを知りました）で調べて見たら、桜と出ました。なんだか、嬉しい。大きな木になるまでどれくらいかかるのかな？

Our house sits on a small private close of 7 houses surrounding a little green which has several small thin trees .  All of the 7 houses on the close were built in 2015 so I guess the trees are more or less the same age as the houses.   A week or so ago, we started seeing blooms on these trees and we thought they looked very much like sakura (cherry blossoms) but we weren’t sure. Today we used a flower finder application to identify them and confirmed they are indeed sakura!  Sakura means a lot to Japanese (and I think to those non-Japanese who have lived in Japan), so it’s really nice to have some right outside my window. I wonder how long it’ll take them to grow into large trees with lots of blossoms.