Almost everybody I’ve talked to lately has complained that spring seems late this year. It is if you compare it to last year but that spring came two weeks early and headed full steam for summer. According to my calendars (and blog posts) from a few years prior, this spring is right on target if not a little ahead. I think what it is getting us all a little down in the dumps is the fact that we’ve had very few of those blissful, sunny, 70 degree blue-sky days and a whole lot of raw, windy and damp ones instead. And this week, forecast to be rainy day after rainy day, isn’t likely to lift our spirits any higher than the floor. The only thing for it is to wallow in the spring blues.

There’s no shortage of the color blue in summer’s gardens but to me blue is never more beautiful than in the spring when it positively glows against other colors – particularly the chartreuse and limey-shiny greens of fresh foliage. And isn’t it even more vibrant on a grey day? – Easier to photograph too. (Hover over for captions and click-on for larger view.)

Do you have the spring blues too? Which are your favorites?

Don’t forget to head over to May Dreams Gardens for a Garden Bloggers Bloom Day look at a few other colors blooming today (er – yesterday.)

Yesterday a visiting friend and fellow blogger asked me, “What’s your favorite thing blooming right now?” and with very little hesitation (it’s best to answer that sort of question as quickly as possible) I answered, “Crabapples.” Despite having an easy dozen other answers to that question on any given day, crabapples are on the front of my mind right now for a couple of reasons.

One is, I’ve been wanting to buy one for my own garden ever since I started paying a mortgage and am still trying to make up my mind about which one to get. At Blithewold we have a grove of three gorgeous Malus floribunda that are almost wider than they are tall and very dense. We also have a fairly recently planted orchard of Malus ‘Dolgo’. According to Dirr, these will be biggies (30-40′) with a more open branching structure. Our ‘Prairifire’ is still young (destined to be 15-20′ tall and wide) and has gorgeous deep raspberry buds and blooms. (Love that one…) But probably our most beautiful crabapple of all is the ancestral tree at the water’s edge. Nothing is more photogenic than that tree in full bloom.

Do you have a favorite crabapple?

The other reason crabapples are on my mind is because when they bloom is also when the Baltimore orioles come back (-the birds, that is. The baseball team won’t be at Fenway again until next week.) I love hearing their call – louder than the spring chorus of lawnmowers – and seeing their bright orange breasts flashing and clashing against all that pink. I’m not sure what they work on in the crabapples – they are nectar sippers – but they also eat insects. As a matter of fact, they are one of the best consumers around of our most destructive insects and caterpillars. Don’t bother spray because the orioles will be happy to eat all sorts of things like fall webworm, gypsy moth larvae, tent caterpillars, potato beetles, scale, and the sawfly larvae that make lace out of rose bushes.

Male orioles make the trip up from Central America, Mexico, etc a few days before the females in order to stake out their territory and they often come back to the same place every year. And the females construct the nest, which is a perfect illustration for the nightmarish lullaby we all grew up with. (Remember, “Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”?) They suspend a woven pocket-like bassinet miles off the ground at the ends of branches. Gail spotted an old one blowing around high up in a Norway maple this winter – much too high up for a picture, alas. The birds go quiet after mating but keep your eyes peeled – they’ll be eating serviceberry and cherries as well as caterpillars. And keep your ears tuned: sometime in August up until they leave in September, the males sing again.

Did you happen to notice when the orioles came back too? (Here it was Friday the 6th. Click on the photo for a closer look.)

If I had been less distracted by tulips and planting gardens this week I might have remembered to promote an excellent event that has brought all sorts of people who had never before heard of Blithewold (perish the thought!) here today. Members of the American Public Gardens Association opened their doors all across the country to those in the know (National Public Gardens Day was promoted by Better Homes & Gardens this year) and as the only open garden in Rhode Island we’ve seen lots of new faces. It’s wonderful! And I hope we see them again.

After all, we don’t do all of the planting we did this week (about 600 new and transplanted plants went in the ground) for our own amusement. (Not that I’m not amused because I totally am.) And even though we’ve told everyone we talked to that we planted for the pollinators, we didn’t actually plant it just for the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. We did it – we do all of it including the weeding, raking, mowing, sowing, watering and deadheading – for you, our human visitors and our beloved members. And we hope you’re thoroughly amused. And maybe inspired too.

Where else but a public garden can you see so many tulips labeled for easy decision making come July catalog time? And where else but Blithewold can you stroll in the sunshine along the waters edge and then through the deep shade of a bamboo grove?

Did you visit a public garden today? Were you inspired? Did you become a member?