Source Very little is known about Bl. Joan of Toulouse's early life, but we do know that she was accepted into the Carmelite order in 1225. She was the founder of the first tertiary Carmelite order and schooled boys for preparing to enter the Carmelites.

Source Irenaeus was the bishop of Sirmium, a short distance from Belgrade. In 304, he was taken before the governor of Pannonia and tortured for refusing to sacrifice to false gods. He was going to be drowned in the river, but he insisted that he would rather not be drowned. He was beheaded instead.

Source Gertrude was born in Landen in 626 and was the daughter of Bls. Pepin and Itta. She refused to marry, becoming a nun instead. After her father died, her mother founded a double monastery at Nivelles. She became abbess in 652, the year that her mother died. She died on March 17, 659.

Common henbit ( Lamium amplexicaule ) Sand bittercress ( Cardamine parviflora ) Purple dead-nettle ( Lamium purpureum ) Creeping phlox ( Phlox stolonifera ) Forsythia ( Forsythia × intermedia ) Forsythia flowers in a vase. Dandelion ( Taraxacum officinale ) Can anybody guess what this bird is? Please comment. And this one, too? Persian speedwell (Veronica persica ) is beautiful at this time of year!

  Source Aurea lived with her parents in the eleventh century in Villavelayo, during the Moorish occupation of Spain. She liked reading the lives of the saints and Scripture. She became a Benedictine nun at the convent of San Millán de la Cogolla, but she had only spent a little while at the convent when she fell ill and died around 1069, aged 27.

Source Anselm was a duke in earlier life, and he served his brother-in-law who was a king. He left for Rome to be a monk in around 753. He was later appointed abbot and given permission to inter Pope Sylvester's remains into his abbey. He died in 803, having been a Benedictine for fifty years.

  Source Walburga was born in around 710 and was the daughter of a West Saxon chieftain and her brothers were named Willibald and Winebald. (Later on, Willibald became a bishop and Winebald founded two monasteries. They both became saints.) Walburga was schooled at the monastery where she later became a nun. In 748, she was sent to Germany to help St. Boniface with his missionary work. When her brother Winebald died, she was appointed abbess of the two monasteries that he founded. She died in 779.