Spring! No, no wait....winter.

Bit of a weather roller coaster 'round these parts of late. Quite a few scattered days in the 60s, interspersed with.....

Yeah. That was yesterday.

But two days before....

The sprout in the upper right is one of the three smaller allium. The sprout in the middleish bottom (detail below) is the big ol' allium about which I am super psyched,

The peony is sending up shoots

After the yellow crocuses came the purple ones

The season's first daffodil! It's one of 2015's bulbs.

The is the state of play of the daffodils along the back yard's back wall. To the right are 2015 plantings. 2016 to the left.

And then there is more inspiration from A Way To Garden: wouldn't it be lovely to recreate this with willows? Willows! It could be at the "entrance" up to the yard from the patio in back, when we eventually redo the patio and that wall.

From http://www.willowsvermont.com/kits.html

And why did I never put together before that pussy willows and weeping willows come from the same family?!

Poppy and allium and shade plants

I was reassured to see yesterday that the missing allium - the $9.95 Globemaster - is indeed now popping up some leaves, assuaging my fears that some wretched squirrel had made off with it, or some other tragic fate had befallen it.

Secondly, here's an exciting list of shade-friendly plants: http://kendruse.com/2017/02/plants-for-shade-a-list-of-some-to-try.html

Lastly, the latest "A Way to Garden" podcast was on poppies, with this useful note on the type I am trying to grow by seed:

And you have one perennial poppy that you sell seeds for—the Oriental poppy [below]?

A. Yes, and I really like them, but I don’t have enough to hardly mention them. But I like them because they disappear later, and I love annuals. So I can plunk an annual I’ve started in a pot right in that empty spot, or right near it, and have a continued show through the summer, because hr Oriental poppy sort of bowed out in July.

Crocuses laughing at "winter"

It's not like there haven't been cold stretches this winter, and snow and all that unpleasantness, but on the whole it's been mild. There have been some crazy warm days over the past couple weeks, here and there - upper 60s! It feels soooooo goooooood.

Anyway, the bulbs are forging onward in response. The crocuses have bloomed almost 3 weeks ahead of last year. I am delighted to see them, and thrilled that they came back after last year. You never know.

April 22

April 22

April 23

April 25

April 25

March 1

March 1. Daffodils on left; crocuses right.

Daffodil leaves have been up forever, and also three of the four allium (I anxiously await the fourth and hope it all is not lost!) This year's tulips are coming up, too, but not last year's yet - fingers crossed, although I wasn't that fond of last year's.

March 1

Finally, I checked on the mini-greenhouses today and unfortunately they were sitting in about an inch of rainwater, so hopefully they're not a lost cause.

Sowing the seeds of love

Yesterday was an uncharacteristically lovely February day, in the low sixties. I trimmed the bushes in the front and did some cleanup of dead greenery on perennials, and Emma and I cleaned up a great many sticks that had fallen in some high winds and heavy rain and snow over the past few weeks. And then we started our mini-greenhouses. We only had six yogurt containers on hand so that is how many we started. It might be a little early for this sort of shenanigans anyway, but since seeds are cheap, we've nothing to lose!

The photo shows them today, after their water has condensed.

We planted parsley (still have some of those seeds remaining - there were a lot!), sage, portulaca, poppy, mini bell peppers, and strawflower.

Eleven deer

Eleven! You can't see them all in these pictures, but there were indeed eleven.

Unusually glorious January day

That is all.

Lurking under leaves

I finished raking today!

I found a few things lurking under the leaves.

There were two of these little lizards (although both pictures are of one). Last year I mistakenly identified these as salamanders, but as my dad pointed out when he saw a dead one a couple weeks ago, they have scales. So lizards.

Why are the alliums coming up already (foreground)?! Is this very bad? Is it because the leaves kept the ground warm?
Also the nettles and forget-me-not still look very much alive, despite winter. We'll have more frost later this week so we'll see what happens.

And what are these coming up in front, in my tulip patch? Crocuses from last year, it looks like?

Not pictured: some fat slugs, which were dispatched.