It’s taken much longer than usual, but the tulips are finally in bloom! The local tulip festival had to extend festivities for a week to catch up with the late blooms. Most of the tulips I grow myself are fairly late-blooming anyway, and they’re just coloring up this week. I particularly like Spring Green, and a little apricot species tulip whose name I’ve forgotten.
It snowed all night here, not sticking too much but flattening the daffodils. What kind of April is this, anyway? Fortunately, primroses can put up with almost anything. This one, Mahogany Sunrise, has always been one of my favorites.
It’s been so cold this month that everything in the garden is late - the lilacs haven’t even begun to bloom yet, which is very unusual for this area. The tulips are just coming into bloom this week (if the snow doesn’t flatten them, as well).
Probably the tiniest flower currently blooming in the yard right now (each flower is about 1/4″ across). The leaves are a great bronze color, coming up through a mass of wild bleeding heart. I had a yellow epimedium as well, but it seems to have self-destructed.
This was one of the prettiest places we saw on the Big Island of Hawaii - Onomea Bay, near the Hawaiian Botanical Garden north of Hilo. A rainstorm had just passed through and everything was sparkling.
We are off to the Big Island of Hawaii today, to experience the delights of hot lava, sulfur gas and plate lunch! The garden and this blog will have to get by without me for the next week. As you can see, the garden’s doing pretty well on its own anyway (ignore the weeds), and I’ll have at least one post lined up so the place won’t be completely deserted. I won’t be around to respond to comments, though, unless I stumble across a computer along the way.
But with any luck, I’ll have some great material when I get back!
The grape hyacinths are blooming! They really are invasive, but they carpet large swathes of the garden in bright blue, and they’re pretty easy to pull out if necessary.
Happy Easter to everyone! It feels like spring may actually be here (despite the snow yesterday morning)!
The crocuses are kaput, but the daffodils are opening just in time to give the garden some new color. I have some plain King Alfred-style yellow daffodils that are bright and cheery, but I especially love these Jack Snipe dwarf narcissus. They’re short and sturdy (and don’t fall over in the rain, of which we’re having plenty), they’re bright and they smell great. I keep adding clumps of them, but I don’t have nearly enough yet.
The rhubarb in the back yard is just beginning to sprout. It’s not any sort of fancy variety - in fact, it came with the house. But it’s vigorous and tasty, and we’re really looking forward to our first rhubarb pie.
The early stalks have a certain alien quality to them, like a gunnera or a tree fern. Who first thought that it might be edible?
The pussywillow is finally in full swing! The catkins on this variety are especially huge, and they lengthen as they age. It’s been raining all night, and I love how they catch water on their fur.
Every year in Skagit County we slog into February feeling like spring will never come. It’s been windy and wet and cold for months, and we know perfectly well that summer won’t really get under way until July. But then in February, every year, there’s a spot of warm sunny weather. Just enough to get people out into their yards and start thinking about the possibility of spring.
The timing of our sunny weather often coincides with the blooming of the first round of crocus, letting the flowers open up wide to the sky. A good rainstorm will flatten them, but while the weather’s warm nothing is so jolly as a lawn spread with purple and yellow crocus. Soon it’ll start raining again, but by then we’ll have the daffodils, which can stand up to it.
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