I spend a lot of my time looking at individual plants and taking pictures of their progress once I’ve set them in the soil. That’s been more of my focus than “the big picture” which is probably why I have lagged at creating professional looking landscape design. However, watching the skinny bareroot trees and shrubs or the fragile seedlings and hidden bulbs come into their own over the past 9 years is rewarding. So, I’m giving homage in this photo essay.
Thank you, spring frosts for not totally destroying the Star Magnolia this year. Sure, the petal edges are a little bit browned, but they didn’t get blasted and fall off!
Star magnolia still in bloom as of April 27!
Thank you, chipmunk or squirrel for digging up a crocus and reburying it in a location it obviously loves better than my choices where people keep running over them with the golf cart!
Chipmunk had common sense.
Thank you to my kid who did not run over this pussywillow with the lawnmower, unlike the last one that was hidden in the tall grass and even had its wire cage demolished. I now have my first black pussy willows this April.
Not a caterpiggle, but a black catkin!
Thank you, whoever came up with the color of hyancinth–City of Haarlem. That primrose yellow is so charming and cheerful!
City of Haarlem hyacinth
Thank you, Baughers, for having this primrose on sale–my first ever–that actually made it through the winter and is now blooming by the sidewalk with puckered leaves and rose pink petals.
My first primrose
Thank you for proliferating in my damp, sometimes floodprone yard little checkered fritillaria.
Checkered fritillaria
Thank you, hyacinthoides, you beautiful blue clumping bulb, for spreading and providing spring joy in an area that plagues me the rest of the summer with poison ivy and Virginia Creeper vines.
Hyacinthoides hispanica doing what they do best.
Lastly, thank you late afternoon sun, for letting me take golden pictures like this of my earliest daffodils on the slope. It is so worth the effort!
Molten sunlight
