golden bulbs

A neighbor gave me some crocus bulbs, I planted them last week around the backyard trees, where I will see them from my kitchen window. I never had crocus in hand before- the papery coverings on the bulbs have a gleaming, gold/copper hue, rather pretty.

It really felt like burying treasures in the ground, to dig wedges out of the damp, dark soil and tuck the little golden orbs out of sight.

Here's for some early spring flowers!

arrangement

My daughter picked a crocus from the flowers blooming at the old property and brought it home for me to see. She wanted a vase for it but then saw the Croton piece I am trying to root in a jar, and stuck it in the center. I thought it quite pretty, if a bit unusual.

crocus!

My favorite purple Crocus are finally here. They've actually been blooming all week, but I only just barely got out to take a few photos.

spring

Poking through the yard, looking for growing things. Quite a few Crocus under the front-yard trees, but only yellow ones. Where are the blues?

The Parsley plants are all growing lush through the leaf cover.

I found one Rhubarb unfurling its weird fat red shoots! A second one I can see the rosy nubbins just below the surface. Pulled the leaves back and gave them glass cloches. The other two plants I'm not sure if they will come back. One spot has blackened stumps- from flower stalks? but I thought I'd removed those, maybe I missed them- and the fourth spot, nothing.

The other plant I've seen very few signs of are my Daylilies! The Daffodils in their corner are bursting with buds, but I don't see any daylilies. I noticed this because in a neighbor's yard her whole bed is full of daylilies several inches high already. I pulled back the leaf mulch and found some green shoots coming through, but not as many as I expected. I'm hoping it's just that her spot gets a different amount of temperature/light and so hers are emerging earlier? but I don't know.

snow flores

We finally got some snow- just two inches, plus plenty of icy rain. So I tramped outside this morning to take some pictures of plants in the snow. Yellow Crocus that emerged just earlier this week:

and stubborn Daffodils still growing through the mulch I tried to suppress them with.

yellow

I thought Crocus only grew in the springtime? This flower, which looks very much like a crocus to me, has just emerged from its summer estivation and is blooming again.

violet crocus

I must have two varieties of Crocus, because these violet ones with delicate stripes on their petals are twice as big as the others, which are already starting to wilt and fade.

crocus

Crocuses are opening all around the front-yard trees. My favorites are the white

cream

and blue-violet ones.

The yellows just seem too bold and brassy.

Crocus!

The Crocus are starting to come up!

Blue on one side of the driveway, and yellow on the other.

flowers

Crocuses are almost done, starting to fade and look shabby

Daffodils are in bloom!

Grape Hyacinths are beginning to come up

and Tulips are sprouting all over the front beds

flowers

This little group of flowers is growing in the same spot where I took a picture of the first Crocus bloom last year. I think it's the same one- already spreading into multiples.

Some of the plants I moved into the Daylily corner (now bursting with greenery!) are forming buds. I think they're Daffodils, not tulips.

crocus

The crocus are blooming this week! (Exactly the same time as last year). They are under the two front trees. One bed has a lot, the other very few.

There are cream-colored ones

white ones

purple ones

and lots of yellow ones

green shoots

Took a walk around the yard today. Sunny, but a bit chill. Raked leaves up where they had blown into corners, cleared the litter off that corner where the Daylilies are transplanted, and mulched them with a bucket of compost that had been saved in the shed all winter. (It looked like the best compost I've ever made!) You can see all the little green shoots of Daylilies and Tulips poking up through the darker compost; so many more than I saw even just yesterday!

Discovered little green shoots with streaks of color coming up under the front yard trees, even when snow still sits in patches nearby. I think it's the Crocus!

 And in the nearly-empty bed edging the front walk, little tiny green plants show their faces. It's all that Phlox I got from a neighbor who had too much in her yard last year; I had thought it was all dead but it's coming up everywhere on the front of the bed. I'm so pleased. Hoping now that perhaps my Hostas are still alive, too; I'll wait and see before I plant something else in those spots.

 

 On the fence edge of the long garden plot, I found Garlics growing, those I had planted last summer in an attempt to make a wall of greenery, and promptly forgot about! I didn't really expect them to come up this spring. They weren't protected much, except for some leaves that had drifted against the fence. But they look nice and healthy. On the other side of the yard, where I intentionally planted Garlics in a row against the fence of the walled plot in Nov, a few straggly looking ones are poking out from the leaves. A bit of snow expected this weekend, so I'm not going to uncover them yet.

garlics against the long bed

 

  

straggly one in the walled plot

stuff is growing!

I was happy to see when carefully uncovered of their winter leaf mulch that the onions survived and are sprouting. The trees in the front yard have bright crocuses coming up around their base (previous owners must have planted those bulbs, I put in bluebells last fall but don't know when they'll sprout) and the tulips are coming up strong. One lone purple crocus came up on the side of the house that was full of purslane last year; I'm going to plant a row of marigolds there soon.

It was so nice to work outside. The day mild, warm, cloudy heading on to rain later this afternoon. Raked up the entire back lawn for the first time- lots of my winter leaf mulch blew all about and it was messy. Looks so much better now! (This fall will bag up all the leaves and use leaf mold or partly finished compost for mulch, it will stay put better) The turned-over pile completely filled up the new bin (even with the bottom part removed), so after topping it off with some pulled weeds mixed with the last three months' worth of kitchen veg scraps (sealed in buckets) and half the dead leaves/grass raked off the lawn, I put the rest of the leaves/grass into the empty buckets. I still plan on keeping a veg scrap bucket in the house, so the material is partly decayed by the time it gets out to the pile, and hopefully won't attract rats. Maybe instead of getting more sand I'll layer it with the leaves/grass off the lawn, to smother and add brown material.

Lots of birds around. Today I saw robins, a bright cardinal, a flashy magpie, dozen juncos, and a pair of woodpeckers. They're all very busy, and Irwin intent on stalking them.