Spring is coming up all over! The daffodils are fabulous this year! I have put a lot of work into planting daffodils the past few years. I plant not only for cultivar and color, leaning towards vintage and antique bulb, but also for staggered bloom cycles. I have early, mid and late spring daffodils. However, it has been such a weird season so far that they are all a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

Things I have not seen that I can’t explain are my blood root. I leave them where they occur naturally and I have seen absolutely none of them. It’s so weird.

Scilla are going strong, but I am waiting for lejocum. The English and Virginia bluebells have sent up their leaves. The herbaceous peonies have pretty much all poked through the soil. The tree peonies in a lot of cases are budding. I only have one really mature tree peony and I can’t wait! The other tree peonies bloom, they are just much smaller.

The first plants have arrived mail order, and the rosebushes from the Antique Rose Emporium are in the greenhouse. The reason that is the day they arrived it was 36° here and they had just arrived from Texas where it was 68°. So I am acclimating them, and erring on the side of caution. The Duke of Edinburgh and Kirsten Poulsen arrived in beautiful form (amazing shipping).

Azaleas and a fun hydrangea arrived from Mr. Maple. Now is the time when I start hunting through my email to figure out what I ordered one because I’m sure there are things I have forgotten about. Because I am such a crazy gardener I get gift certificates to places for Christmas and then I buy my plants around December and January and forget all about them and then it’s like Christmas all over again when they start to arrive!

I am late starting my seeds, but I finally made myself do it. Some different tomatoes and my chili peppers and a handful of herbs to see if I can grow them from seed. this year for the most part, I am trying small batch seed purveyors from Etsy and other places.

I have been chitting some potatoes, so soon they will go into pots.

Half of the wood chips are down out back, and I have to do the first round of pine straw mulch.

I have a whole bunch of shallots and garlic, going like gangbusters in the greenhouse as well.

OK that’s all for me and I am going to go back and look at my daffodils some more!