The to-do list might be difficult to prioritize right now that everything needs doing, but when the faces all around us look lovely and the light is just right, the best (if not the number one most important) thing to do is grab the camera. Just like capturing your best friends’ laughs on film, there’s no good reason for any gardener to pass on memorizing moments like these. The weeding can wait.

Click on pictures for a larger view and/or mouse over for captions.

Daffodil Days ends this weekend (with a May Day Fairy Festival!) but it’s by no means the end of the show. All of the daffodils, including the most interesting late varieties, are open (and will pop back up after the rain, no doubt) and the tulips are beginning their peak. Not only that but Gail pointed out to me that this must be a banner year for the trout lily (Erythronium americanum). Neither of us can recall them ever being so floriferous and the individual flowers seem larger than usual. If you visit, look especially for the patches of white ones (Erythronium albidum) swimming in the sea of yellows.

Have you already added “memorize this moment” to your to-do list?

This spring is feeling exactly like one of those Jack-in-the-box wind-up toys. The crank handle has been winding … winding … winding … winding until just when I gave up really expecting it anymore, it POPPED open. The last couple of days I have been having the same kind of adrenaline spasm I used to love (and dread a little bit) as a kid.

It just seems like spring has been going along at a measured pace and even holding back a little. But after a rainy spell and a couple of actually warm days, spring has shifted into a higher gear. The daffodils are just about all out here now, early and late at once and the early ones, if you look closely, are finally beginning to go by. Tulips are colored buds one day and open the next. Leaves are emerging on trees and shrubs and looking almost full-sized by the afternoon. Quick-quick.

We’ve been going along too; steadily keeping up and holding back. Until today. Now it seems as if everything needs to happen all at once – yesterday. We’re getting plant orders in, shifting plants out of the greenhouse and others in, and we’ve started to plant and transplant in the gardens as if there’s no tomorrow.

But of course there is a tomorrow. Just because spring is picking up the pace doesn’t necessarily mean we gardeners will fall behind. To me, the must-do list seems impossibly long only right up until we start doing it. And while the work always takes less time than I think it will, spring also tends to linger longer than it ever feels like it will. There’s still plenty of time to breathe and enjoy it.

Have you felt a Jack-in-the-box jolt too? Do you feel like you can keep up with spring’s pace?

Blithewold is chock-a-block full of spring and it just keeps getting better – and by better, I mean springier by the minute. And because the weather is forecast to stay on the cool side, the daffs – and tulips when they open – should linger even longer. (That’s the silver lining around a chilly spring. Leave it to me to find the upside, right?)

We have taken every rainy-day opportunity to catch up on transplanting seedlings; and we’ve starting haunting our favorite nurseries and wholesalers, so the greenhouse is full to brimming. And the gardens and grounds are full too – full of daffodils, trout lily (Erythronium), mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), grape hyacinth (Muscari), scilla, periwinkle (Vinca), tulips (opening next week by the looks of them), all sorts of trees in full flower (from the showy to the invisible), – and people! There’s nothing we like better than seeing the grounds full of people out for a eye-full, nose-full, ear-full of spring and a whole bunch of family fun. And interestingly, the only place on the property that starts to feel a little cozy, is the greenhouse. (Of course that’s just as it should be.)

Click on pictures for a larger view (did I take one of you or your kiddos?) or hover over for captions.

Is your garden full-swing into spring? Is your house filling up with seedlings? Have you started haunting your favorite nurseries yet?

There’s no doubt now that this is the week for narcissists at Blithewold. Even if daffodils aren’t your thing (perish the thought!) you’d have to admit that so many open all at once is a sight for sore eyes. (And didn’t our eyes get sore this winter?) There’s just something about their cheerfulness – about as subtle as a smiley – even on an otherwise dreary day like today. (Pictures were taken in yesterday’s sun.) William Wordsworth said it best, “A poet could not but be gay, in such jocund company”.

As much as I enjoy staring into the faces of daffodils (conceitedly wishing they loved me back), I’ve also been noticing the hopeful, happy-making changes in the wider landscape. I can’t help but ogle the reverse striptease of the trees as they begin to put on lacy lingerie. So lovely. And yesterday we saw the first bumblebees of the season – they must be last year’s queens buzzing flowers to feed a new brood; and noticed that the frog chorus is suddenly out in full voice.

What’s catching your attention? Are you being narcissistic too?

Besides the visible beauties in bloom like the daffodils (about halfway towards peak!), forsythia, Cornelian cherry, maples and spicebush, my nose knows there are other less visible blooms too. Evergreens like Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa), Sawara cypress (C. pisifera), and Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) are absolutely loaded with flowers and great foggy puffs of pollen – more than Gail and I have ever noticed before. (Click to enlarge pictures below – the top one shows a pollen cloud.) My theory is the trees were stressed by the last summer’s drought and are endeavoring to ensure the survival of the species by flowering madly – the same way African violets bloom gangbusters when we forget to water them for a while – in hopes that the next generation will carry on if they can’t. Or they’re simply going through a normal cycle of heavy and light bloom years.

The Katsura (the male flowers of the weeping form – Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Pendulum’ shown below) and maples are showy enough for me to call gorgeous but they’re also wind-pollinated – probably smart to not take their chances on insects when April weather can be so iffy.

I am really looking forward to breathing again and seeing the bees working on cherries, crabapples and serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.). Unfortunately serviceberry and crabapples are susceptible to a disfiguring – but rarely life threatening – thing that’s also blooming right now: cedar-apple rust. Check your Eastern red cedars (Juniperus spp.) for bright-orange gelatinous alien-looking galls – they usually bloom on a sunny day right after a rainstorm. Cut them off and throw them away – not in the compost.

What have you noticed blooming?

To see more – and probably showier – flowers blooming around the country and world today, visit Garden Bloggers Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens.