I’m no doubting Thomas but I can tell it’s spring because I’ve seen it up close, and I’ve smelled its intense sugary sweetness in the air. Spring and I were both in Zone 8 last week. Now that I’m back in Zone 6 (maybe 7) I’m reassured to know that elsewhere in the world the cherry trees are blooming and the daffodils are almost gone by. A little time away also made the changes here at home all the more obvious to me and extra precious.

Maple trees (such as red, silver and sugar) are in full bloom, forsythia and magnolias are starting to open, and leaves are emerging on all sorts of Asian introductions, earlier than everything else – just like Professor Tallamy said they would. Not only that but if it wasn’t raining quite so hard today, I’d take my first Daff Cam picture of the season because a few in the Bosquet have already started to open. Looking back at calendars and pictures from the last few years, I think it’s safe to say that this year we’re all being treated to a little spring preview. Over the last week in the greenhouse, Gail and the volunteers filled benches full of seedlings and the gunnera pushed enormous, weird flower spikes out of its mysterious tangle.

If the rain ever lightens up (we’re calling it Lake Bristol right now) I’ll take you outside. In the meantime, here’s a glimpse of the preview I was treated to at the Washington Park Arboretum and Japanese Garden in Seattle. If only there was an app for scratch-n-sniff…

What has changed in your garden over the last week or two? Is your spring sproinging or already sprung?

I’ll take what I can get bloom-wise right now. I might even go out in the rain and get a little bit excited over a single pink bud on a pretty sorry looking dawn viburnum (Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’).  I’d have gone for a closer look but, silly me, I left my waders at home… The blurry little butterbur (Petasites japonicus) look almost like the sun to my deprived eyes, and mud splattered hellebores made me nearly giddy. Nearly.

Many thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for providing the impetus to look for blooms on a day like today. For a look at what’s in bloom everywhere else, check out Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

If only March would get on with it. To speed up my own experience of this month, later this week I’ll be looking for signs of spring in a slightly further along zone (8). I promise to do my best to bring the lamb back with me. See you in a couple of weeks!

I know I’ve said it before but it’s good to get out. Yesterday Gail, Julie (our education coordinator) and I went to the Perennial Plant Conference at UCONN in Storrs, CT and came back jazzed all over again about things like native plants and edible landscaping.

Rosalind Creasy has been advocating and demonstrating edible landscaping –beautifully – since at least the early 70’s and we have certainly been playing with the idea here for the last few years too. But now I’m all over the idea for my own garden – all over again. Truth be told, I haven’t been much into planting vegetables at home unless they’re exceptionally pretty. But I’m coming to realize that they’re almost all exceptionally pretty if they’re worked into the design in the right way. Not to mention the benefits of growing your own food. And she makes such a compelling case for replacing lawn (preaching to the choir) – I don’t even have kids but if I did maybe I’d already know they prefer a garden to a blank expanse of turf. Gardens are always more interesting. Plus I came home with her cookbook …

And Doug Tallamy who wrote Bringing Nature Home (a book I have mentioned being excited about before) made an even more compelling case for replacing sterile suburban wastelands (ie. lawn and other exotics). He of course makes the case for planting native species. Tallamy recommends “flipping the age-old landscaping paradigm on its head. Instead of designing where your flower beds will go in a sea of lawn, design where you need lawn for walking spaces and plant the rest of your property with native ornamentals.” And here’s why we should all do that:

As he puts it, “humanity’s life support systems are failing.” We have to remember that the ecosystem provides services such as the air we breathe, water management and purification, food, weather systems, carbon dioxide sequestration, waste recycling and so on, and we have to quit taking all of that for granted. If we lose biodiversity, we literally lose it all. 33,000 species of plants and animals are considered “imperiled” and unable to perform their function within the ecosystem. Not good.

Everything is connected (just like in Avatar) and “insects are key!”, says Tallamy. They convert the energy from plants into food for other animals. Did you know that 23% of a black bear’s diet is insects? (In my family we always joked about all the protein we were getting every time we accidentally swallowed a bug. Turns out to be true.) Trouble is, most insects are specialists who will only eat certain native plants. If you worry about planting things that will just become defoliated and ugly because of all the insects, he says that doesn’t actually happen – and has the data to support it. Something always comes along to eat the insects. That’s how it works – and why it works. Here are his lists of great natives listed in order of how many butterfly/moth species will be supported by them.

I could go on and on … but instead I’ll just recommend reading his book yourself if you haven’t already. And in the next few weeks, take a look around and make a note of what is leafing out. Asian species are generally ahead of the natives by a week or two. Do you need a few more natives in your yard? In my own garden I have decided to evict a few things including a favorite young styrax tree. For one thing I know it can escape cultivation because mine had originally planted itself where it didn’t belong. And for another, it supports a whopping zero native caterpillars. I’ll also be evicting more lawn for vegetables… You too?

I’ve done a lot of grousing about March lately. And it’s almost as if she heard me and said “Oh yeah? You think I’m a drag? I’ll show you how awesome I can be!” Over the last couple of days, the weather has been beyond gorgeous. Quite a few visitors have taken advantage of bright beautiful days to wander the grounds. — But not all of the visitors, at least yesterday, were human. I’ve seen turkeys on the property before but never actual birds with feathers, wattles and all. A skittish trio strutted and lurched across the front lawn right in front of my camera. It looked like a female and 2 males – would that be a happy family or a hot chick with suitors? (My clearest shots only captured a pair – I think it was the female who stayed out of the frame.)

I’m usually on vacation in early March so I can’t tell from my stack of calendars/garden journals, but I have a memory – some vivid memories actually – of really awful weather right about now in recent years. (I know for sure that it was cold and rainy on the 8th two years ago. — Rain makes the knot tighter.) If I go by pictures, last year I took my first shots of skunk cabbage on the 13th. Either I was late spotting them or the skunk cabbage and crocus are early this year. By the looks of some of the skunk cabbage blooms, they may have been up for a while already. Anyone else keeping better track?

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is probably not my romantic ideal of a native wildflower but it is a fascinating creature. I didn’t know (before looking it up on the internet) that the flower, which is a spadix inside a spathe hood, produces heat. It’s one way of attracting pollinators – the other way being a foul odor (I did know about that). The heat they produce is also useful for busting through frozen ground earlier than almost anything else.  Today’s pollinators were honeybees – I’m not sure I’d just love the taste of skunk cabbage honey but the bees will take what they can get this time of year and skunk cabbage knows it. Another fascinating thing is that the roots grow and then contract like muscles pulling the plant ever deeper into the ground. The older the plant the more deeply embedded. The pointy bud that shows alongside the bloom spathe, and should have been showing actually since the fall (though I never noticed it), is a spiral of leaves that will unfurl as the flowers wilt. To see skunk cabbage in action, look around swampy areas – most of ours are down by the water garden. It’s an eye test – all but the most solidly burgundy-colored are well camouflaged right now in the dapple and leaf debris.

Have these last few days been better than average in your garden too?

Nature is out there making all sorts of promises and I intend to hold her to them. I am not afraid of spring. I know what’s coming. My eyes are open and I’m ready for it.

Some might say that spring is – or at least ought to be – a gardener’s least favorite season. There’s too much to do and not enough daylight to do it. The possibilities are so endless that a gardener could conceivably become paralyzed with indecision and the coming season holds so much potential that we could easily feel overwhelmed.

Whatever.

I love spring the very best – always have. If it weren’t for spring, there would be no reason for summer, fall, and winter. What would be the point? Besides, is there anything better than the spring tease of new growth busting out? – Much sexier than the undressing of fall – though I love that the very best too. I know that the work through the next few months will be mentally and physically challenging at times and the hours long but I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to it.

The crocuses are up at Blithewold – look carefully and tread lightly – especially in the grassy vicinity of the Osage orange by the North Garden. Stinking hellebores (Helleborus foetidus) have started to open by the Moongate; tulip foliage tips have emerged (don’t tell the deer); and of course buds everywhere are swelling. The weekend forecast is for near 50°F and sunny. Spring is a promise. Bring it on.