Early Blooms

An unseasonably warm January and beginning of February has resulted in all kinds of flowers coming up in our yard. Since we moved in at the end of October, we didn't get a chance to plant any bulbs, and I had been lamenting not having any spring blooms to enjoy. But over the last couple of weeks we've been noticing all kinds of shoots coming up in the front and backyard, and this week, some of the crocuses started blooming! I couldn't be happier! It's funny since we never planted flowers at any of our old places, and now we really want lots of them everywhere. Something about it being "our" house, I guess. :)

Some pretty dark purple crocuses. They were stretching to follow the sun all day yesterday, it was fun to watch them change positions and arching toward the warmth. It was nearly 60 degrees yesterday!

Lighter purple crocus, these guys are everywhere!

Sedum, holding in the morning's dew in their lovely little rosettes.

Not really sure what this is, and the picture isn't showing how pretty and pink they are!
Probably a weed knowing me! :)

Periwinkle, myrtle, vinca, whatever it is called, the little flowers are so pretty! We have this all along the back of the property where the fruit trees are, and had originally thought about pulling it up and putting grass there, but these flowers are so pretty we might have to keep some of it!

There is also a ton of what I think are irises coming up, as crocosmia, and something else that has little tufts of grass looking leaves that I assume will flower into something! Who knows what else might come up! I'm so pleased that I get to enjoy some flowers this year even though I didn't manage to get any in myself! This yard is just full of surprises!

Yesterday we spent part of the morning at a pruning class at our local nursery and learned some good things, and got home and went straight to work in the yard. Kevin mowed, and I cleaned up some of the rhodies that had been poorly pruned. Then I whacked back a bunch of the dead wood on our chrysanthemum, and I can't wait to see what it does later in the spring. It looks so much better! Then we went a little crazy and started removing a ton of the forsythia that has taken over the back of the yard and is crowding on our fruit trees. We had originally thought we would just cut it back a bit and see if that worked, but we removed almost one entire plant and now have several months worth of yard waste piled up in the backyard! Looks like we'll need to borrow a truck again to get rid of it. But, it opened up the back so much, we think we'll probably just get rid of all of it. I'm not a huge fan of it anyway, and I'd rather have the fruit trees get the space to produce fruit! :)

Next on the agenda is cleaning out the rest of the garden beds to get ready for planting veggies. Time is moving very quickly, we usually are getting ready to plant our snap peas around now, and we still haven't figured out where to put them! Yikes! We're also thinking about putting in at least one bed in the front of the house, so we'll have to do some terracing. Then it's time to get the chicken coop up! Wow! We've got some busy weekends ahead of us.