Spring is everywhere

Yesterday, we saw our first groups of Sun Disc. These have multiplied estensively since last spring. The flowers look beautiful scattered in clumps all over the dormant lawn in Mack's yard. The first of the Ice Follies flowers are fading, but many more are on the way. We're now seeing many blue anemone blanda blowers amid the white ones, and the waves of Anemone St. Brigid and Anemone de Caen continue to be abundant. Only a few of these have dropped their petals, and we just have more and more. We have three kinds of blue dutch hyacinths. I like the one with the white stripe on each petal. There are also two shades of pink. Last year was a wonderful year for Dutch irises, but we've seen no buds yet this year. Iphieon has appeared. Our variety, whatever it may be, is a much paler blue than many are, but the flowers still look pretty on the oak motte when the skies are overcast. We're seeing many different varieties of tazetta miniatures and also several types of poet's narcissus. Among the tiny ones are Little Gem, Hawera, Minnow, and at least a half-dozen other varieties, the names difficult to remember, except for Baby Moon. Little Marvel has been furnishing English peas for the table. Although the leaves have appeared concurrently with the flowers, the pear tree does have many blooms, and the redbud has joined the display with its own flowers. This morning brought our first bachelor buttons, in three colors so far: blue, pink, and white. We don't have many leucojums these days, but they are producing many, many flowers apiece. At least some part of the fig tree has survived the winter, because leave buds are visible on some limbs. This is good news, because the fig is one not to be found in catalogues, just in old yards, and it's quite hardy. Flocks and flocks of cedar waxwings seemed to be around everywhere yesterday, picking trees and shrubs clean of their fruits and berries. A red-shouldered hawk flew very low overhead in our yard this morning, heard before seen. We saw giant maroon tradescantia where a house was torn down. Someone rescued most of them when the house was first demolished. These must have been there all along and in some way disturbed, because we've seen none at all there since the house and its neighbors went. Our little blue false dayflowers had been in bloom but were nipped back by the frost, as was purple heart, but I know they'll be back. We can see four o'clock leaves now for the first time since last year's plants collapsed at their joints last fall. Even all the hippeastrum plants (amaryllis from pots) that have spent the winter outdoors are sending up second sets of leaves, the first having been shriveled in the cold. All the indoor houseplants have been back outdoors since the weekend. Fennel has been pruned back for the third time since the fall so that only the new feathery shoots remain, without distracting bare brown stalks appearing above them. Fennel makes a beautiful background for flowers, and the allium flowers now everywhere show off other flowers very well. Our neighbor's live oak is nearly bare of leaves; only one of ours has begun shedding, but the leaves on that one are falling like rain and that tree will be done before our others even begin.