My Dawn viburnum looks ALMOST good enough to photograph this year. It's got lovely, very early, deep pink flowers, and I think they're supposed to be fragrant, too, but as Dirr says, it doesn't really put on much of a show. It's right outside a window, so I can see the flowers up close while staying warm. It's been blooming (sparsely!) since late January - it starts around the same time as the witch hazels. The heaths are in full swing. I love the really deep pink ones, they have reddish-bronze foliage that contrasts beautifully with the flowers. This is the year I have to cut many of them back - they've sprawled more than even I can take at this point. If I can't find more of the deep red I may try to propagate them too - I've been looking locally but have only seen the pink and white varieties. Hellebores - I've cut them back in the most prominent areas, along the walk to the front door, but haven't gotten to the ones that are a little further afield. Maybe tomorrow, since it's supposed to be a nice day. They DO look awful when they're first cut back, so it helps to do that before the flowers start drawing attention to these plants. I think winter jasmine might be done for the season - it doesn't appreciate super low temps after the flower buds have formed (compared to the truly hardy things like witch hazels). I'll have to go have a look tomorrow - maybe I'm just forgetting what's in flower! Sorry, no pics - I've been too busy pretending winter is over.

Kim, You will be farming and gardening in a very unforgiving climate there, so perhaps their desire to wait for the rain comes from their knowledge of how tough Spring planting can be without the rainfall. I'm just guessing about that. I am sorry that your planting plans are a mess and aren't conforming to what you wanted, hoped for and expected. Please hang in there and don't stop believing.....even with a late start I bet you have a great year. It is unfortunate that your promised helpers are not available. Grrrrr. I hate empty promises. I wish you lived closer to all of us too. If you did, we'd caravan out to the farm and help you plant onions. Don't be too hard on yourself over the onion planting. Just do what you can do every day and be thankful for the progress you're making. I noticed that almost nobody in my area (or nobody who lives on roads we drive along so we're able to see their gardens) has their onions in yet, likely because most everyone here gardens at grade level, so their soil still is too wet. I am grateful for our raised beds because even though their soil also is wet, it was dry enough for me to get the onions planted last week, and today I'll be able to plant a lot of other stuff. So, even though I feel late here (and I am late compared to most years) apparently I'm ahead of everyone else who gardens around me. We all have to work with what we've got and, depending on one's location, it seems like we're either too wet or too dry.......sort of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears......it is hard to find that planting window when things are just right. Bruce, Our cats wipe out the moles and gophers, so they don't bother me either way, but it is stunning how many mounds I see on other people's property, particularly the ones with sandy soil. To some extent, our large amount of clay saves us from the moles and gophers, and the cats do the rest. If only that were so with the voles, but they tunnel completely underground at night, often hiding the entrances to their tunnels in adjacent woodland or areas of the neighbor's pasture with tall grass, so the cats have to hunt really hard to find the vole holes. I cannot let the cats out at night because of the coyotes, but I bet if the cats could be outside safely at night, they'd control the voles too. It would be tempting to use the poison for the gophers if only you didn't have grandchildren (or pets?). I noticed the sudden appearance of gopher traps, and all sorts of poisons and repellants on the store shelves in the last week or two, so clearly rodent season is underway now. For years, back when the garden fence was only 4' tall, we always had bobcats in the garden. I knew they were lurking there hoping to get birds, house cats, squirrels, bunnies or rodents, but I don't think I realized how many voles they probably were controlling until we raised the fence to 8' in height to keep out the deer. Since that effectively kept out the bobcats too, it was about a year after the raising of the fence that I realized we 'suddenly' had a huge vole problem. I wish there were a way to keep out the deer and allow the bobcats back in. It would sort of freak me out to drive up the driveway and see a bobcat just sitting there in the garden right in the middle of all the plants in broad daylight, but now that they are gone, I miss their varmint-controlling efforts. I don't understand everyone's obsession with moles either, but then, that's because our lawn is clay and we don't have moles. Maybe if we had moles tunneling everywhere in the lawn, they'd drive me nuts. I don't know. Also, we're rural and I could care less what our lawn looks like. We're not trying to maintain a pristine green carpet that impresses all the neighbors. I can understand that folks who live in suburban neighborhoods where there is a ton of pressure to have the standard perfect green carpet of grass would feel like the moles are ruining their lawn and, by extension, their lives. That whole obsession with perfect green lawns in housing subdivisions is a real thing, you know, and it amazes me how much time and effort people put into feeding and watering a green lawn and controlling the weeds just so they can mow it once or twice a week. It seems like a lot of work for nothing (by nothing, I mean that the standard green lawn doesn't produce food or flowers and doesn't support much wild life). When we lived in the city, we had the standard beautiful green lawn in the front yard, although I replaced as much of it as I reasonably could with ornamental planting beds. We had St. Augustine ('Raleigh') and it was so pretty, but I'm glad we aren't trying to keep a lawn like that green through all of OK's hot, dry, drought-filled summers. As our shade trees here get larger and larger, more and more of our bermuda grass lawn is being shaded out and replaced by ground covers, and that thrills me. That was my plan for the bermuda grass all along---to shade it out. I don't miss the green carpet of grass at all here. Our city back yard always was more garden than lawn grass and that was good---it gave me places to plant things that weren't green lawn, so I always spent more time in the back yard than the front yard even way back then. Nowadays I spend all my time in the garden that I possibly can, and resent every single hour of mowing that takes me away from my garden. It is funny how kids and grandkids take it so personally when someone else has offended their parent or grandparent, and those kids have long memories too! I guess that makes us stay on our best behavior when the little ones are around. Looking out the window I can see that it is dawn outside (pun intended). I've been waiting forever for the sun to come up, and finally that moment is about to arrive. Planting day at last! After today, the onions will not be alone any more. Dawn

Claire, Very smart, I should have taken more photos of the daffs before the rain we are expecting today. Mine are really just opening up. I hadn't heard of 'Karenoma' and it's nice. I like the long cup. And they are nice and erect. 'Toby the First' is a cute name. I have tried to buy bulbs known for naturalizing, but my soil is on the heavy side which I imagine doesn't help. I have 'Flower Record' and 'Ice Follies' both are said to be good naturalizes and for me, they do always come back and sometimes in larger patches, but what I've found in the past 5 years, is that when I have dug up spots that I wanted to move to another location, that there are a lot of bulbs and I have had the opportunity to increase the amount in the garden, by dividing and potting them up in the spring right after bloom and then planting them in a new spot in the fall. I have had disappointments, because my expectation is that once planted, the bulbs are going to expand in size and number of blooms, similar to a perennial, so that by year 3, I'd expect them to have a footprint 3x larger than the first year of bloom. I have a couple of spots that seem to be the same size with no more blooms than the 1st year, which surprises me. I plan on doing more digging and moving this spring and fall and order more bulbs in the fall as well. I've also decided to buy late blooming daffodils over the very early ones, just because of the variability in the weather. I just hate seeing them come up and bloom and then get hit by cold weather or snow and then look awful the rest of the season. Along the lines of how I feel about Peonies, when it rains the first few days after the blossoms open. [g]

I thought someone started an April thread, I don't see it? I wanted to say that it is 20F on my back porch this morning. Does anyone else find that shocking? It's still dark out, but I'm afraid to go out and look at what the garden has to look like. Anyone else having temperatures that low this morning? I just went out and checked again, to make sure I was seeing it right. Still 20F. I looked at the forecast and right now it's supposed to be 26F. I just checked out 2 more different forecasts. One that is embedded in the top of my search engine is reporting that it is 27F in my town right now. But the National Weather Service reports it at 23F so at least they are close, but what does that say about my property? Am I in some microclimate? I planned on working outside early and digging a bed out and some other things. Is the ground going to be frozen? I'm thinking I might get a later start than I planned. I'm feeling bad that I didn't cover anything or bring in my winter sown containers which would have been easy, but I haven't thought it was going to get more than a couple of degrees lower than freezing.