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"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size."
- Gertrude S. Wister

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'The snow lies on the ground, patchily, not with a good warm covering, but like a tattered shawl that lets in the cold. I know just where to look for the newcomers in the borders when spring calls them out."
- Helen Ashe Hayes

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"Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream."
- Barbara Winkler

Green Thumb Sunday Fun with Puschkinia

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Listen for the hummmm, and look closer... bees are flocking to the Pushkinia. How many do you see? Two here...

Three here... or four? (I do leave a plant tag planted here and there, but not for too long, just until I learn the name of the cultivar...) Do you label plants? A neighbor used to call gardens with too many plant labels "pet hamster cemeteries."

Three here definitely...

Gardeners, Plant and Nature Lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

a quick photo of what I found in the garage

I bought, at drastic markdown prices, two bags of hyacinths (can't remember what color) and two bags of scilla (blue of course) last fall during the pre-Christmas post-Thanksgiving clearance sale in the garden department at the grocery store.
Took them home and potted them up and left them in the back of the garage and forgot about them.
Sometimes I am brilliant.

(Just a few days of sunshine and they oughta green up. I hope this shallow pot isn't too confining, but if hyacinths can bloom in forcing vases, then this can't be too bad...)

sell one loaf and buy hyacinths

How did that ancient Persian saying go ... to paraphrase, if you are fortunate enough to have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy hyacinths to feed your soul. Something to think about.
Persia, isn't that Iran?
I was just thinking yesterday while I was yanking out the tall purple verbena (bonariensis) about what I had written about my various plant collecting manias.
I had simply forgotten the grasses. I've grown over thirty ornamental grasses, most before they became popular. By the time Art Cameron was giving his grass talks I was winding down.
Not that I could ever afford to do it (collecting) right, but I used to hit every plant sale, plant exchange, wild plant rescue, plant clearance, and seed exchange I ran across.
I was the quintessential coupon clutching mom who finagled the food budget to cover the annuals and the bulbs.
Adding a bag or two of scilla or crocus to the shopping cart every week while doing the food shopping adds up when you figure the spring bulbs start showing up in the bins in late August. This week I finally broke down (they were half off) (I'd just been exposed last week to another mad bulb planter's powerpoint at our Master Gardener meeting) (it's tradition, TRADITION! - she said in her Fiddler on the Roof voice) and added two bags of pink hyacinths to my grocery cart. Life goes on.

Oh, back to the grasses ... a little pointer to folks who are just beginning and may recognise yourself in what I've described: if your budget is tight and you need to buy small good plants just to get the start of a collection, try Bluestone Perennials Nursery mail order catalogue.
And promise me you'll recycle the packing peanuts.

damage assessment

The arctic blast after all of those warm days in March 'did a job' on my spring bulbs. The snowdrops, crocuses, dutch irises and eranthus that usually enjoy long, cold early springs were hurried out in record time. The earlier than normal blooming hyacinths and daffs whose stems turned to mush will recover and bloom again next year.
May we all be here to see them bloom properly again.
The later to wake and rise bulbs in the same plantings will be fine, but the beds will be sparser.
The twinflower and bloodroots were hit hard, but surprisingly, the hardy cyclamen coum is still blooming prettily. The primroses are blooming fools. Scilla and pushkinia are perking up after laying down on their beds like femme fatales in a soap opera.
Spring Beauty, which the very mention of makes Herb laugh as being some kind of silly spring gardener joke, are just beginning to bloom.
And I'm out pruning woodies whenever I manage a conjunction of (my) schedule with outdoor temperature and sogginess of lawn. I wanted to tackle the roses yesterday, as the forsythia have been blooming for a few days, only the wind was turning the thorny stems into lethal weapons. But there is always something else to do.

Spring is springing

Winter aconite. I always wonder if they will return. The originals I planted are underneath an old lavender plant, and I can't get a decent photo, but this little patch is in a more accessible spot. The Labrador violets haven't woken up yet, and the Epimedium needs to be cut back before it begins to wake up as well. Reminder: If you click on the photo, you can see the full sized photo.