2010: It Begins! ....Season of Blooms

Yippee!


Despite rain since Friday and ongoing today, here we have the first daffodil bloom of 2010!
This is Topolino, a diminutive daffodil of sweet charm and early bloom. I check my spreadsheet for last year's first bloom on this group of Topolino and discovered it was 030809....perhaps our nasty winter with heavy snow is at work here.

From Daffseek, it is 1 W-Y, very early and dwarf (less than 12.8 inches)...

Because I am that way (grin), I checked the spreadsheet to see who else was blooming this time last year (but not this year...) and I was surprised to find it was the faithful Ice Follies....who are a bit behind...and several not-what-they're-supposed-to-be-ones.

I have another little patch of Topolino that was blooming this time last year, but not this year.

Being a somewhat lazy gardener....I like it when my plants gift me. Here are a couple hellebore seedlings that are notable because they are blooming! It takes a while for hellebore seedlings to get to blooming size. You can see they're not huge...yet....and that they are nestled amongst the pink Roman hyacinths....which, by the way, increase a hundred times faster than the blue one does...and should be blooming very shortly (the pink ones are among the earliest hyacinths to bloom)...but, I digress....


One is a quite nice dark dusky bloom and the other is pale pink with an interesting green streak in the flower that almost looks star-like (to me). Fun! I will have to ponder this growing season where I might relocate the hellebore seedlings. They deserve their own area. I see that they're not...at least yet...(probably unlikely) facing upward as is the current and nice trend in hellebores. Breeders are striving for those flowers because we folks that buy them like seeing the flowers. However, the hanging nature of the flowers has served them well. It keeps the pollen dry on rainy days like today, making it more likely seed will develop...which is the whole point (from their perspective).

Hopefully, I'll have more hellebore flowers to post as they seem to daily be improving and shaking off the winter. I'm not in a hurry since hellebore flowers can persist....until June...at least in my garden.

I had intended to photograph the split in the daphne Alden's Regal Red, but my picture was not what I wanted. However, in this one, at least, you can see it is about to burst into bloom. You'll note it doesn't have the margins of aureomarginata....nor quite the fragrance, in my opinion. Maybe it will change my mind this year.


Update: Look what I found...a picture of the brokenness...from 022810....hence the icy snow...


This was the little patch of crocus where just one flower was open the other day (the one with the pollinator in it).....now, look...


Crocus are so cool like that. They're shut tight with the rain right now.

When I last looked at this little group, there was only one of the golden yellow ones open...now...


Just because you might be wondering, the iris reticulata are holding up pretty well in the rain...so far....I do think I might dig up these little clumps and move them. They were part of the driveway experiment that was so disastrous...


Finally, while Kobe and I were out dashing in the rain taking pictures (We had to! A daffodil was open!), I turned around to find this...


The cats clearly had no intention of getting out in the wet. Loyalty...dogs have it...they'll follow you anywhere....cats, not so much.