Signs of spring in the garden…
Like all gardeners, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring. While the calendar won’t declare it spring for some time, here in Central Texas, the signs of spring abound with the recent above-average temperatures.
These aren’t new spring plants popping up, but I love the color in the winter garden.
If you look closely, you can see the buds forming on the Mexican plum tree.
The new bark is emerging on my lacebark elm tree. Beautiful bark is a wonderful sculptural element in the garden.
The bluebonnets are growing quickly now – getting ready to put on a real show in my crushed granite path.
My loropetalum has hundreds if not thousands of teeny tiny buds, waiting to turn into pink fringe flowers.
The hellebores are starting to bloom. I have to go out and lift them up to see these delicious drooping flowers. Even though I can’t see them easily when walking down the path, the lure of these mysterious blooms makes for a fun garden game of hide and seek.
This one’s in full bloom. It’s limey-green petals camouflage this flower even more than the others. Helleborus ‘green gambler,’ is a fast grower and usually has some burgundy spotting, veining, or picotee on each bloom. The picotee is the edge that is a different color than the flower’s main color.
These are very special little specimens — muscari golden fragrance. Unlike most muscari, these are not the tell-tale purple, but rather a soft yellow and they have a wonderful scent. They are very low to the ground – about 5 inches high – so I literally have to get down on the ground to get a whiff of them. But it’s worth it!
The primrose jasmine is about to burst forth beautiful yellow blooms. This one is about 5 feet tall, so it will be brilliant when it’s covered.
These little daffodils are looking good. Soon it will be time to blow away the blanket of leaves and let the flowers shine.
The deer have been checking things out in the almost-spring garden as well. It’s ok, maybe they pushed down my newly planted bulbs since I know I probably didn’t plant them deep enough. (I don’t really worry about that, though, since they seem to come up and perform regardless of my late and lazy planting!)
My cemetery passalong irises are already blooming. I believe these came from my garden blogger buddy, who blogs here about her garden, which is filled with many kinds of iris.
