First flowers of the year! (What pretty thing did you see in the garden today?)

Had a lovely surprise on the garden today! The crocuses are up and the primroses are blooming!

Another pretty thing found in the garden today. Tomatillo husks are fun to find, all lacy and delicate looking.

I also have some primroses appearing, this is their first year and they make going to/getting home from work so much nicer at this time of year! :)

Most of my property is still covered with a foot of snow right now... I'm jealous you have plants coming up :)

I saw some purple vetch had sprouted a flower yesterday. One of my large black oaks has leaves on it today. I saved the best for last, the poison oak is back! It is mean, but it is actually really pretty with it's shiny leaves...

Matt McSpadden wrote:Most of my property is still covered with a foot of snow right now... I'm jealous you have plants coming up :)

I bet the snow is pretty too!

It's still getting into the teens F most nights, but the overwintering spinach and chard is thinking about growing during warm afternoons. That's pretty enough for me!

I'm still hoping barely a months worth of actual winter will be enough to encourage things to sprout, but we've had a warm couple of days & most of the snows from the blizzards is just about gone this morning & it's my day off. It's be nice if I happened to find some wintergreen in the woods, or something. Not much grows in February around here. Wintergreen & Skunk Cabbage are the only two I can think of off the top of my head, & we don't have any of the other one, yet.

We currently have tete-a-tete daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses and primulas in bloom. The first three were photographed two days ago, before the snow briefly covered the ground this morning.

Most of these flowers usually bloom next month (except for the snowdrops) in our area and I have to keep reminding myself that it's still February.

Not certain if some of these are what I think they are, but in the woods, among the usual Trout Lilies, early violets & invasive periwinkles that are always out there, I may have caught what is either the cranberry I started or Northern Bedstraw, aka Stickywilly. I know most of what's out there is, but at this young a state, they look fairly similar & I think the cranberry should be a bit more woody than the Bedstraw, which is just an herb, so this very well might be it.

The other one could be several things. I believe I have some wild Chervil out there, but it could also be the Fringed Bleeding Hearts I scattered.

I possibly found a ginger beginning to grow the other day, which starts as a little spike. I couldn't identify it until I thought to look up what a ginger seedling would look like & it very well may be. I only found the one, so far, though & was unable to remember where I'd seen it, so I could get the picture. No actual flowers on anything, yet, though. Nor was I ever able to definitively locate any Wintergreen.

Still in the snow here too.  It’s warming up some, lots of rain!  Can’t wait for those first snowdrops!  

I’m loving my pretty kale, my crocuses, tulips and daffodils right now.

My yard is still mostly snow-covered, but there is a strip of bare ground up against the south side of the house where I can see daffodils pushing up, just a couple of inches. Blooms are still a few weeks away, and when the snow melts more, crocuses will bloom, too, out in the yard.

The only thing I'm likely to find blooming anywhere in northern Wisconsin in March is skunk cabbage, for which I usually make a special trip at the end of the month. It's able to melt the snow around itself by generating heat. There is a boardwalk through a cedar swamp (which gives way to an ash swamp and then an open sedge meadow) not too far from home where I can see them.

The first week of April will be teeny tiny hazelnut flowers (and the aforementioned imported bulbs). I've got to wait until May for most spring flowers around here! But I don't mind.

The Magnolia is in full bloom now, in my front yard:


There are grape hyacinths too, but they are in the shade, not good for a photo. And the crocusses are over their top, not looking so nice anymore. In a few days there will be tulips.

Marisa Lee wrote:

The only thing I'm likely to find blooming anywhere in northern Wisconsin in March is skunk cabbage, for which I usually make a special trip at the end of the month. It's able to melt the snow around itself by generating heat. There is a boardwalk through a cedar swamp (which gives way to an ash swamp and then an open sedge meadow) not too far from home where I can see them.

That is very interesting about the skunk cabbages! We don't get much snow here and it is long gone by the time the skunk cabbages bloom so I never would have known that.

Here in Sacramento,  my Santa Rosa plum, Babcock peach, Anna apple and Blenheim apricot are all finished blooming and have set fruit.

Black mission fig and Li jujube have just started pushing out tips of new growth

This pineapple sage (pictured) has been blooming since... well I don't remember when.  Same with the rosemary in my backyard.

My almond tree and the tete-a-tete miniature daffodils have been out for a few weeks and are finishing. The full size daffodils have been out a week. Violets are flowering nicely, and I noticed the rocket patch which has given me green leaves to eat all winter will soon be flowering and going to seed.

wow 😍

The dandelions are starting to flower now and I saw my first primrose open today. I picked a bunch of daffodils to send off for mothering Sunday (this weekend in UK). The forecast is for sunshine all week - looks like our spring has arrived!

The first flowers that were blooming here were Stork's Bill and Henbit.

Now, we have Verbena blooming.

I found two crocuses this afternoon that were not there last year! Evidence of improved soil or a present from the squirrels? Either way a delight !

Mike - I love your pineapple sage. When I lived in the SF Bay Area, it would bloom all winter. The hummingbirds loved it.

First tulip opened today:


Rosemary already blooming for months ...

Bees enjoying one of my many redbud trees :)

I so miss my redbuds since moving north, and man am I jealous of all the early blooms being shared!  The prettiest thing I've seen so far up in the NY Adirondacks is the daily catch of voles and mice in my traps as the snow and ice melt away and expose the tunnels all the little devils have used through the winter to ravage my perennials and shrubs!!  I did put in 400 daffodils in my quarter-acre of front yard last fall so I'm very hopeful for something to pop soon

Starting to see some green on my raspberry and blackberry shoots. I love starting to see color in the winter barren garden.

Finally the snow has melted enough for some flowers to be up. Although it is snowing today I know it won’t stay!  I was trying to make some Easter photos so I thought I would share them with you.  
Neighbour came by to show her daughter some flowers. Little Rosalie loved to eat those daffodils!  

Things are really just starting here..   flower buds on some fruit trees,   tulips just starting to color on the tips, lots of birds checking out the birdhouses...   rhubarb looks good!

I’ll try again.

I’m very proud of my Puschkinia libanotica which I found on a mountain close by. It is finally spreading some in the garden. I love it!  I go every Easter morning at 0500 to collect more little bulbs and plant them all over the property.

Did not expect to find this today. This isn't even the species of Trillium I put out, here. Sadly, he looks like he's an only child, though.

D Tucholske wrote:Did not expect to find this today. This isn't even the species of Trillium I put out, here. Sadly, he looks like he's an only child, though.

I love finding trillium in the spring. It always surprises me. I found a purple one yesterday when I've only ever had white ones. 😁

Usually red trilliums are lone rangers!  

Mary-Ellen Zands wrote:Finally the snow has melted enough for some flowers to be up. Although it is snowing today I know it won’t stay!  I was trying to make some Easter photos so I thought I would share them with you.  
Neighbour came by to show her daughter some flowers. Little Rosalie loved to eat those daffodils!  

I’m usually the last person to freak out about a plant being poisonous (since many edible plants have poisonous parts, like tomato and rhubarb for example), but daffodils are really not good to eat.

Marisa Lee wrote:

Mary-Ellen Zands wrote:Finally the snow has melted enough for some flowers to be up. Although it is snowing today I know it won’t stay!  I was trying to make some Easter photos so I thought I would share them with you.  
Neighbour came by to show her daughter some flowers. Little Rosalie loved to eat those daffodils!  

I’m usually the last person to freak out about a plant being poisonous (since many edible plants have poisonous parts, like tomato and rhubarb for example), but daffodils are really not good to eat.

You know babies! They stick everything in their mouth. No child was harmed in the making of this photo. I teach wild edible courses.

Mary-Ellen Zands wrote:

Marisa Lee wrote:

Mary-Ellen Zands wrote:Finally the snow has melted enough for some flowers to be up. Although it is snowing today I know it won’t stay!  I was trying to make some Easter photos so I thought I would share them with you.  
Neighbour came by to show her daughter some flowers. Little Rosalie loved to eat those daffodils!  

I’m usually the last person to freak out about a plant being poisonous (since many edible plants have poisonous parts, like tomato and rhubarb for example), but daffodils are really not good to eat.

You know babies! They stick everything in their mouth. No child was harmed in the making of this photo. I teach wild edible courses.

I figured she was just doing that usual baby thing and not actually chowing down - but would hate for someone else to misunderstand and think daffodils are edible.

We bought this house in November last year, so I'm having fun discovering what is actually in the garden now! There are so many bulbs popping up all over the place I can't wait to see what we have

This morning I woke up to a man walking in the garden picking flowers!  Grrrrrr, I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall, I yelled to John to say there was a man picking flowers in the yard!  He said I know, I told him he could. I didn’t think you’d notice. He wanted to pick flowers for his wife for mother’s day...what???

Leilani Miller wrote:We bought this house in November last year, so I'm having fun discovering what is actually in the garden now! There are so many bulbs popping up all over the place I can't wait to see what we have

It's so fun, isn't it? When we moved in to our house, I called the former owners to ask if there were flowers to watch out for (because I wanted to plant things but I didn't want to kill dormant plants because I was too impatient) and she had no clue. Some day lilies was all they had ever planted! Just lots of grass and tons of mulch over thick black plastic. ☹️
But ..
We have a mother-in-law unit and the grandma that lived there had planted some fun surprises along the edge of the woods, like daffodils, tulips and lambs ear.

Tulips flowering now :)