We are roughly two weeks behind where we were last year, based on last year’s photographs. Everything I mention in this post was in bloom at this time last year. The weather changes so much from year to year that I cannot tell you which year is closer to normal—or if there is a normal any more.
Weather aside, I love spring ephemera and will search for them doggedly from mid-March on as long as it’s not pouring rain. They are mostly very small, so I have to actually walk away from the window, go outside, and exercise my eyes looking for changes. Changes are rapid, so there is plenty of incentive to go outside frequently.
They look like dancers to me, unfurling gracefully. It has not reached 50° this week, but despite that, they are growing rapidly.
The twinleaf petals all fell off by April 9 last year—they flower for just a few days—while this year the plants have not even started turning green. As they grow, their cells will stretch, and the hidden green will show.
I could see the hepatica from my window this morning; it is sending up flower buds in fur coats. If the rabbits get too hungry, these may get eaten. The seed husks that are mixed in with the unfurling flower buds were tossed there by some exuberant purple finches. It’s been cold and they’ve been hungry.
The last little native I look for, rue anemone, is just peeking. I don’t know that it even counts as peeking until the flower buds peek out from their leafy hugs.
Beyond these small natives, the witch hazel, which is a large shrub, is coming to the end of its blooming period, and the bluebells which are ephemeral, but not small, are also popping up in the backyard.
There are three nonnatives in bloom: daffodils, snowdrops, and scilla. The daffodils are taking their time opening.
The snowdrops, on the other hand, have been in bloom for a month, and are just beginning to look not-quite fresh.
They are interesting to look at. The petals are temperature sensitive. When it drops below freezing, the flowers close up even more tightly than the ones you see in the photograph above. When it gets warm, the flowers really open.
The scilla, which was brought in by squirrels at least five years ago, is such a beautiful blue that I let it stay.
I really love that blue, but reading up on it, it’s invasive and will choke out natives and other better-behaved plants. I will have to dig it all out, or at least pull the flower stems and leaves off so that neither set seed nor feed their bulbs. And some Scilla bifolia has reappeared too; I’m pulling it up as soon as I spot it, even if my original intent when I stepped out the door was just to get the mail!