New pleasures of the season

Joining the iris contingent are Siberian irises, all-yellow Dutch irises, and yellow-and-white Dutch irises. We can see from buds that soon there will be pale blue Duitch irises. We have more plain old (not plain at all!) poet's narcissus than we've had in years and years. There's one white wood hyacinth in bloom. Each day brings more April Tears flowers. We still have quite large clumps of white Dutch iris. Our trailing nasturtiums are blooming in several colors. We try to train them up fences but they escape onto the neighboring property. Iphieon and pink oxalis are blooming in profusion. We now have four saucer-sized flowers on our 99-cent clematis from Albertsons, with more buds every day. All trees and shrubs are leafed out except for the pecan tree and at last it is showing swelling buds. There are more ranunculus flowers every day, of all colors and varieties, including a pretty pink-and-white picotee type. The blue florist's anemones did the best this year; last year the dominating color was red. All the ascplepias in pots is in bloom, but among the butterflies attracted to them have been no monarchs, yet. There are beginning to be more Tubergen's Gem species tulips. There are now seven different varieties of sweet pea in bloom. We think we see buds on a hollyhock grown from seed; it's the tallest one. The armadillo or some other creature bulldozed another hollyhock plant that was looking promising. We could certainly use some rain.