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.

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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?