Mother Nature, are you being sneaky?

I checked in the front, South bed today and my daffodils are in bloom. What?! This warm weather is really stirring up the activity on the lot. When I checked my post for my daffodils last year, they had bloomed around the end of April. Are they early this year?...or maybe last year they were late? It's going to be fun comparing my growing notes and garden photos from this year to the previous.

The peonies in the back bed have poked their shoots above the ground. I also spotted the tiny blades of the dwarf irises sticking out of the mulch in the fence bed. The foxglove, also in the gate bed, has some healthy new spring growth. If next weekend is going to be as nice, I'll reset some plant tags and run a full inventory check.

Double the Daffodils, Double the Fun

I’m doing a bit of a time warp, using the date of my photos to backtrack and log the happenings about the lot. The crocuses have left our lot to be replaced by a whole-lotta tulips. The front bed is going bonkers with red and yellow tulips popping up all over. I’m seeing these tulips all over the neighborhood in the front of homes. Since our house was built in 1927, I’m wondering how old these flowers are. Was the neighborhood planted all at once? Were classic, red and yellow tulips in vogue one year? Or, maybe the bulbs have been divided over the years and gradually migrated down the streets, being handed from  neighbor to neighbor. 

As a pretty accent to the tulips, there are several groupings of double daffodils throughout this front bed. This is an introduction for me to the concept of “doubles.” A double flower has many overlapping petals that make the bloom appear very full. Personally, I think it makes the flower look like a poser, the flower actually wanting very much to be viewed as a type of rose. But, that does not mean I don’t find them pretty!

There are also some pink tulips and orange/yellow striped tulips in the southeast corner bed. Another orange/yellow striped tulips emerged from the sidewalk bed. In this bed, the scrawny, non-blooming peony from last year is well on it's way with a full bunch of leaves. It has at least doubled in size. There are two other peonies in the backyard bed. Maybe I’ll see more than one bloom among the three of them for this year.