early crocuses

"We must learn to look on plants not as mere points of color, but as old friends on whose coming we can rely; and who, returning with the recurring seasons, bring back with them pleasant memories of past years."

Henry Bright

The Tommies are blooming.

More Signs of Spring:
Tim, across the street, starting his riding mower.  Ahem, every time I go out the door.

Meijers parking lot - the appearance of huge mounds of plastic bound mulch and bales of soil.

All the cr@p people have thrown from their cars (who raised them?) over the past 4 or 5 months is not yet hidden by new weed growth.

I stepped on my first slug of the year this morning.

And, the Tommies are blooming!

GTS - one day late but hey, crocuses

Join

My crocus(es) of hope
Gardeners, Plant and Nature Lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

While I was occupied yesterday with my annual chore (as opposed to fun) of hacking back the miscanthuses, I heard the sounds of spring peepers, bees, and my first haiku of the season which seem to come out of nowhere while I'm gardening and usually return there.

"Spring ephemeral,"
she sighed, decapitating
another snowdrop.



Hey, I don't knock the heads off my spring ephemerals on purpose! Here is a happy little scene, and if you click on the photo for the enlargement you can see the hardy cyclamen pretty well.

My happy corner,
Will it blossom tomorrow
if you are not there?

On the topic of crocuses did you notice in the first GTS photo the damage to the petals of the crocuses? I think the bees did that!

The humming crocus
invites any bee in the
neighborhood to stop.



The tommies are the pale, more ephemeral looking crocuses in the photo above.
Some people will tell you the tommies are the first blooming of all crocuses, but around here the tommies are among the first of the crocuses to bloom.

Here is an amusing bit: while I was off looking up the correct plural of crocus, I ran across this:
crocus [ˈkrəukəs]
Arabic: زَعْفران زراعي
Chinese (Simplified): 藏红花
Chinese (Traditional): 藏紅花
Czech: krokus
Danish: krokus
Dutch: krokus
Estonian: krookus
Finnish: krookus
French: crocus
German: der Krokus
Greek: κρόκος (το φυτό)
Hungarian: krókusz
Icelandic: dverglilja, krókus
Indonesian: krokus
Italian: croco
Japanese: クロッカス
Korean: 크로커스
Latvian: krokuss
Lithuanian: krokas
Norwegian: krokus
Polish: krokus
Portuguese (Brazil): açafrão
Portuguese (Portugal): açafrão
Romanian: şofran
Russian: крокус
Slovak: krókus
Slovenian: žafran
Spanish: azafrán
Swedish: krokus
Turkish: çiğdem; safran
Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary (Beta Version), © 2000-2006 K Dictionaries Ltd.

Wednesday already! I'm behind from Springing ahead.

The class is going well, but I hate to tell you how small it is! Well, I always say I hate speaking to large groups. Crikey.
Anyway, what is it doing, being Wednesday already? Time flies. Yesterday was balmy enough to keep the door open all afternoon to hear the birds cheering. FRESH AIR!
And only two days before snowdrifts were covering all of anything green.

Flowers blooming on Tuesday March 13, 2007:
Species crocus, purple, they've reseeded around the yard lately. I appreciate how crocuses draw the bees so early in the year. Life. Yes.

Snowdrops,too. Notice how the amateur cameraperson neglects to spruce up the subject. Is that a stick laying across that flower?

Cyclamen coum:
My cameraship is shakey, sorry, but it is what it is. I had to stick the camera under the leaves of the epimedium that is threatening to beat up the tiny cyclamen. I love it when the little fellow blooms, tiny, screaming MAGENTA.

No sign of the winter aconites yet. They surprise me every time. Can't wait.

Peter Rabbit has been hanging around leaving fertilizer. I wonder if he was the culprit that left that stem of snowdrop there. Throwing down the gauntlet already?