I’ve threatened to shoot myself a groundhog several winters when the snow, ice and cold have just lazed around into April or so. This year, I can forgive that silly hog’s predictions, since he’s obviously become senile and doesn’t have the weather channel in his burrow. In spite of Phil’s predicted long winter, spring seems to be early this year. Maybe not in your part of the country, but here in Missouri we have things blooming  and pollen counts shooting off the charts already.

I’ve been bit by the spring bug in a big way, planning flower beds, working on our pond, getting our seeds ready to go in the garden next month. By the way, if you plant cold weather crops, like broccoli, lettuces or beans, they should go out NOW in our region. Wait much longer and it will be too warm. We’re starting simple this year with a few peppers, some strawberries and a couple different tomato plants, so it will be next month before our little seedlings head outside. If you haven’t started your seedlings yet, get them started as soon as possible!

I have a big post coming up on our pond re-do, but it isn’t finished yet (I’m still waiting on parts to ship) so I thought in the meantime, I’d take a couple pictures of the blooming stuff in our yard. My roses are covered in tiny new leaves, I have daffodils coming up and the crocus have already made an appearance. The tiger lilies are taking off like crazy, I’ve been separating them and moving them about the yard again, they tend to stop blooming if they get too thick.

I have seen bag worms already on a couple of the trees, so watch out for those nasty little buggers on your ornamentals; they can do some serious damage once they leave the nest. I don’t like to use poisons any more that absolutely necessary so I just burn them out with a lighter. They smell like burnt hair which is gross, but the damage to the tree or shrub is minimal, doesn’t involve a bunch of nasty chemicals being sprayed all over the place and is pretty damned effective at destroying the entire nest.

Our magnolia tree put out quite a show of blooms this year and the smaller one I transplanted last year even favored us with a single flower. They don’t like to be moved and I think I really annoyed it by doing just that. I’m hoping the bloom is a good sign that it’s recovering. Our fire bush is also covered in blooms. I’m not sure what the scientific name for it is, that’s what my family always called them.

The official Spring Equinox isn’t until March 20th. However, Meteorological Spring (which I just heard this term this morning) apparently started March 1st.
Off to take some Tylenol for all the shoveling I did today.
-B