I can’t think of a better way to spend a record-breaking official first day of spring than playing musical plants out in the garden. At home I move plants around usually because I didn’t put them in the right place in the first place. (Left to my own devices, I’m an incurable plunker). But here we move plants to change things up every year – as well as to get them in the right place. Plants’ sweet spots always want finessing even if you’ve given it careful thought.

The trick to playing musical plants this early in the season is to have an excellent memory – or to have taken really good notes – or to have left labels.

I always forget how difficult it is to identify perennials at this stage, as they’re just starting to emerge, or if they’re still just a gnarl of knobby crown at the surface. And it’s like an eye-test to find them under the shredded leaf mulch before stepping on them.

It’s also really important to remember, when you can identify the tiny sprigs emerging from a fist-sized crown, exactly how big the plant is likely to get. We want an intensely planted garden but we also want to make sure plants have room to grow without being sat upon by something else. I’ll freely admit to being guilty of “mis-under-estimating” in order to fit more in. Sometimes combinations work anyway and sometimes we have to move things around again next spring. But if the garden was always the same we’d get bored. Wouldn’t you?

I’m pretty excited about some of the changes in the Display Garden. Today I went from being worried that holding onto our theme of planting for the pollinators would keep the Display Garden looking too much the same, to being sure that it will look fabulously new and different this year. And we probably only moved a dozen plants around in there so far. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a garden exciting again. The same is true at home: as soon as I transplant one thing to the right spot I get jazzed about the whole season.

Do you get a move on in the spring too? Do you move plants so the garden will look different every year or to finesse perfection?

Speaking of getting a move on, the daffodils are. I’d hate for you to miss any of the show and it’s just beginning so here’s the first official daff-cam shot.

Even though the mansion won’t be open until April 1, the grounds are open daily (year-round.) Come see for yourself.

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.