Here They Come

Tsar and I took a stroll around the yard looking for those wonderful signs of spring and we had mixed results.

We found this Robin hopping around in the grass looking for bugs or worms to take home to the family. When we lived in the Northeast, seeing a Robin was often the first sign of Spring, but Robins winter here so we see lots of them even in the snowy months.

 We decided to look down first and we found lots of green shoots pushing up.

These are Iris and will soon have their pretty purple flowers.

The Hosta are just waking up in the rock garden.

We love how the wild Violets are moving into the rock garden. These always make me smile. I pulled Tess out of a patch of them when she wanted to roll in them.

Some flowers are already up and in bloom.

This Bleeding Heart makes me smile. I've actually tried to kill this plant several times and it keeps coming back. It's poisonous to dogs and when the pups were younger, they loved to chew on plants in the garden. I tried cutting it down and pulling it out, but it's still here. Fortunately, the dogs pay no attention to it anymore.

The Clematis are climbing up the trellis and will be flowering soon.

Do you see the Periwinkle flowers hiding under the leaves? These are growing under the porch and around the front steps.

Now Tsar and I looked up.

The Plum tree bloomed this year, though not as fully as in other years.

This is part of the reason I love Spring so much. The trees and flowers put on such a beautiful show for us.

The Maples in the side yard are sending out their helicopter seed pods. With the next wind, they'll be flying all over the neighborhood.

The apple blossoms were beautiful this year, but we were sad because neither of our Cherry trees flowered. We don't know if it was due to the drought last summer, or because the weather has fluctuated so this spring. We're had days in the mid to high eighties followed by days in the twenties. The delicate fruit trees probably couldn't adjust. I miss seeing the cherry blossoms.