Exciting News in the Garden

A friend, who lives a few miles away from here, emailed me the following photos, taken just last week:

This was a beautiful, gentle snow, lacking the dangerous icy edge of the snow event we had a few weeks ago. The snow was gone within a couple of days, and now we are heading full tilt into spring with warmer temperatures and birds singing by the thousands to announce the coming season.

I have never heard so many birds. Cardinals, bluebirds, sparrows, mockingbirds, robins, thrushes, wrens, towhees, crows, geese, doves, chickadees, and many others are warbling, twittering, chirping, calling, chipping, whistling, peeping, squeaking, and squawking. Even the hawks are up there, screeching out of tune, but nevertheless contributing their voices to the symphony.

Overnight the hellebores have begun to emerge, overdue by at least a month. I love the embryonic quality of their new leaves and buds:

Hellebores are best appreciated up close. The details of each individual bloom are fascinating:

Other flowers are more cautious, remembering the frigid temperatures of recent weeks. Daffodils are poking their heads up, their blooms soon to appear. Quince buds are swelling. Within days these shrubs will be covered with thousands of blooms. I found the first forsythia flower, and tips of camellia blooms are showing. 

This is very exciting news. The birds proclaim it. I know it. Spring is almost here! Finally!

The Landscape Awakens

The nights may be cold, the days may be dreary, but spring has crept in nevertheless — slowly this year, not in an explosion of buds and blooms, but incrementally until I am forced to concede the season has overtaken winter. What winter? We hardly had one this year. Lou was outside yesterday, and mosquitos the size of land rovers bludgeoned him. With exceptionally mild winters two years running, the bugs have continued to breed, and I am left wanting at least a month of hard frosts. Too late now. 

But joy! The landscape is awakening. Cheery daffodils are always among the first blooms, and other flowers are joining them in the early spring garden.Clockwise from top left: Daffodils, candytuft, flowering quince, and snowflakes (Leucojum)

Edgeworthia is has been blooming with the daffodils for several weeks now. They remind me of ballet tutus!Above is what you see from the topAnd this is what you see from below!

Hellebores continue to amaze me. They are meant to be studied. Mine were once named varieties, but they have wantonly mated with each other and produced babies of questionable heritage. I love them all. (But I still ogle new hybrids with all sorts of frills and uppity pedigrees and prices to match. I would love to have some of those too!)

This is the year of the birdhouse. Among others, I recently refurbished an old cabin style birdhouse, and it has found a new home in the front garden in the area formerly inhabited by the cancer tree. I planted several shrubs in this area, unseen in the following photos and still dormant. I also plan to put flowers around the base of the birdhouse. The old iron stand once belonged to my father, who used it in his workshop with a piece of machinery bolted to it. I buried its heavy cross shaped bottom so that the appearance is more of a traditional post. The cancer tree, by the way, hasn't given up. Already I have found several sprouts insidiously snaking out of the ground, and I suspect I will be battling it with herbicide for a while.

Forsythia, seen above behind the birdhouse, is another early spring bloom that brightens even the gloomiest day. Another one is located at the edged of the woodland garden:

Camellias are blooming in several areas. The lovely shell pink one below is a mystery. Long ago we had to move a red flowering one from its spot behind the mailbox because of nearby construction. Some years later a new one sprouted in its old place, coming up through the low growing junipers that now occupy the site. I let it grow, and I was surprised when it produced a completely different and more beautiful flower than its presumed parent.

Top photo is the gorgeous mystery camellia. Below are two photos of another lovely camellia, Taylor's Perfection, located in the woodland garden.

Finally, here is a peek at a meandering moss path in the woodland garden, just as morning sunlight comes streaming through the trees. I hope to see more of this sunshine, now that spring is here!

May your heart be filled with sunlight, no matter what the weather may be....Deborah