take time to check the flowers Pat...............................G today was my last day off for the next 5 or so days., and Squire decided to fix the car if he could, but that involved us cleaning the carport. Well two are better to do things than one, only after he tossed the wood over to another spot, I saw there was all this composted wood and debris under where the wood was.....and I was supposed to pick up the trash. I couldn't let this compost go to waste, especially when it was LOADED with worms, so I got the garden cart, donned the gloves and started picking thru the debris, and noticed Squire was hosing off an area rug. "Honey?? whatcha doing? I thought we were cleaning up the carport together........." "We are, you're picking up the trash, I'm cleaning this rug so that it can dry (he was using the pressure hose on it) and when you're done, I will go back to cleaning up more that you can't" he says while spraying the rug. It took him two hours to force the dirt and crap offa the rug while I schlepped two carts of debris I couldn't use over to a pile, shoveled up two carts of rich black soil and then push UP the steep driveway and dump into a couple of beds.......now he wants me to go back downstairs and finish what "you didn't complete"..............oy vey.....I HAD plans on replacing timbers in the back part of the front beds.........oh well.G at least half the carport is cleaned and he is trying to fix my car for me. and the area rug is sparkling and the colors are back and it's hanging up to dry (which I hope it does before the rains move in) you gotta love 'em......
maddie
"loonyhiker" wrote in message ...
Oh Mad! You make me want to drop everything and run out to my garden. Unfortunately it has poured down rain all day yesterday and the forecast says the same for today. I did sneak out yesterday before the heavy rain and weeded my front flower bed. Then I dragged limbs that have fallen to the street. But I WANT MORE!!! I can't wait until I can retire!

loony
"madgard" wrote in message .. .
As I was riding home from work a couple of days ago after some wonderfully inspiring warm weather, I started getting into my "cruise and focas" mode. There was no one behind me on the winding road that leads towards my home, and I settled back in the truck and started paying attention to all the signs of coming Springtime.

Spring is already bursting at the seams and outa the ground here up on the ridge, due to those warm temperatures and drenching rains, and the other day, some feeding lightening during a thunderstorm that lasted a good couple of hours here.

The first thing you notice everywhere there is standing mini ponds of water, is the absolute deafening chorus of the peepers singing their brains out. It's so loud in some of these spots where the water is holding along the road, you can hear them thru a closed glass window.

The earth is releasing that hypnotic fragrance of moist and rich soil, and GREEN. You can almost smell GREEN. The trees around here are pin oaks, tulip poplars, dogwoods, redbuds, summac's, maples, cedars, black walnuts, Jack pines, white pines, pawlonia's, mimosa's, catawba's, hackberry, sour wood, yellow and pink locust, iron wood, wild pear, persimmon, and weeping willow's and a few others I can't think of at the moment. But what I see at the moment (besides the obvious green of the privet (grrrr) are strings of small green pearls on slender whips of weeping willow branches. It's as if the fairies spent all night stringing these little tiny leaves that from a distance look like strings of green pearls.

Everywhere there are too many signs of spring abounding. The man who has the three ewes on Valley Home road have their spring lambs already. Seven little black, cute as bugs ear's lambs bouncing around (one ewe always drops an extra one, but they all have twins, which I don't know if it's common or not) and usually the extra one gets picked off by coyote, but I think that they've stopped that occurance.

I find myself smiling and looking at the mama's grazing just far enough from their frolicking children. And all the cow's have calves in almost every pasture I pass. Where there were houses, you see isolated patches of yellow, which is old fashioned buttercups. Even the guy across the driveway has them blooming now for over a week that his step father's first wife had planted decades ago along the sidewalk.

I had driven to Dalton, Georgia on Wednesday and what I noticed was the maples and oaks were blushed with those little deep burgandy pink flushes of newly emerging leaves. They all looked like young teenagers tight together at a first spring dance, clustered along the roadsides starting to fill out.

As I came over my own hilltop, and dropped down the road, climbing back upward, another sign of spring almost slapped me in the face. Sixty seven wild turkeys that have been coming to eat the cracked corn Miz Mary has been laying out on the boulders near the pasture and back of her house by the driveway were having a nice little gathering. I slowly eased the truck into an almost complete stop while I counted hens and was shocked there were that many before the tom's took off to fly down deeper into the pasture and the alarm cry started up and they waddled crazy down into the pasture towards the safety of the cedars and scrub trees in the patches further back.

Soon I will have to cut the Zebra grass down to stubbs, I have four different narcissus blooming. I have noticed that the crocuses are almost spent, and little blue helmets are shoving up thru small clumps of leaves, the muscari's are taking their place. Everywhere I see green noses. I recognize them all. Narcissus, muscari, Siberian squill, the oniony shoots of the alliums, the varigated arrow leaves of the arum's and that frittleria that has never given me a blossom. I leave it thinking it might strengthen up and bloom for me and I have forgotten the color of it's flowers. It could be the Persian one or the orange, I forget.

In the beds, scattered here and there, the soft pastel blue of the woods hyacinth's are like instant flowers. Their smell has been the mysterious fragrances I've experienced that I wasn't expecting so soon. And everywhere perennials are unfurling, opening, bulking up like they're in fast forward or auditioning for a Disney movie.

In the whiskey barrel with the cute little pointy heart shaped leaves of the cyclamen, the Virginia bluebells are not only up, but are making buds already! And I just noticed thick, fuzzy vines of my Jackmanii shooting out of brown dead looking stems from last years outrageous display.

Deep in the NSSG I see I have a stronger patch of corydalis under the small deck, and there appears to be a little survivor of the lost kerria japonica flora pleno that used to be in the corner where I have now placed the varigated red twig dogwoods. This might be interesting.....

The pulmonaria I transplanted from the natural pot in the boulder down in my woods that I was always missing it's small show, has a pink flower on it already. And as I was looking at it's little pink tube-like flower, I saw just past it, the fuzzy bronze green of the bronze fennel poking up.

Fleshy pink curled fists of the newly planted bleeding hearts I bought at Lowes last week are shoving past the soil I added to the clay, and apparently there were anemone that had jumped the bed, because there are also anemone leaves next to the bleeding hearts shoots. Another interesting occurance.

The St. John's wort bush has teeny leaves all over it, and now the Salix has decided to just shoot out leaves along every stem, and apparently it's a walking bush, as there seems to be some daughter stems of this bush trying to escape the confines of the concrete. And there is vinca everywhere.........still.

The Herman's pride lamium is sliver and green and georgous, and I even spotted the first twists of lilies shoving past the warm soil. Daylilies and irises are competing with each other for size, irises pointy and fleshy, the daylilies leaves like furled fans. And I see some of them have pushed past the landscape timbers and popped up under them.

At the soil's surface, all sorts of leaves to other perennials are showing signs. The coreopsis are like little needles, and the phlox planted in the pots is green and bulking up for it's show of pink and hot pink flowers. And in my mom's concrete pot, the Husker's pride has leaves already.

My lilac got a severe whacking last year, and at it's base, popped up a yellow King Alfred daff that I didn't plant. I hear the titters of fairies laughing at their joke of moving bulbs around on me. And from the size of the buds on the lilac, I think whacking the larger stems might have been a good thing.

Varigated leaves on the lacecap hydrangea, folded scalloped columbine leaves in blushed bruised green and plum are EVERYWHERE, and the oriental poppies are ferning up nicely everywhere I planted them.

The browns are quickly diminishing and given time, the vinca will have been erradicated in all the beds. The many pots of daylilies waiting in the cleaned out BBQ pit are showing their leaves, and there is a pot of hosta that a friend brought me for my birthday that I have to plant that I hope survived the winter in.

Down in the woods, the mock orange has already started putting out leaves, the sedums in the broken pots are bulking up, and the daffs and crocosmia are shoving each other in the raised beds like tired and testy children fighting over the window seat. The daffs will be thru long before the crocosmia's show themselves, and as I look at each face, I spot the brilliant sky blue of the tiny teensy squill I must have planted that I always forget about. I want more of these little guys. they are incredible.

The Hellebores are my pride at the moment, and now I think I need to find a dark one and get a double to complete what I have. Maybe another white, but still no signs of daughters underneath their stems.

The first year daughters of the money plants are up now, and the second year mature blooming ones are mounding like the Dame's rockets are, which I seem to have more than I thought. I will have to transplant some of them to better spots than where they are now.

All around me the sounds of birds, frogs, and the winds surrounds me and envelopes me. I don't even hear the muted sounds of the interstate across the hill behind me that wraps around us. Soon the leaves will be out and even those sounds will be more hard to hear.

And the felines are bringing in the voles and moles and rodents to lay at my feet in offerings to their human kitties. That's another sign it's becoming Spring. That and I saw foxes chasing vixen's across the road in hot pursuit.......

Thanks for allowing me to share with you some of the amazing wonders of the upcoming spring..

madgardener up on the ridge, back in fairy holler, overlooking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 6b, Sunset zone 36