I just can’t help myself. The Japanese maples are totally knocking my socks off.

Since it’s forecast to be a beautiful weekend, why not come see for yourself? (The pictures don’t do it justice. Standing underneath one of these trees is like being submerged in pure pigment.) If you do visit, you’ll be guaranteed to catch a glimpse of what’s in the works for Christmas Sparkle too… (I’m not going to give that away here just yet.)

I have been focusing so intently on the gardens lately (I’ll post about why next week) that I think I might have been in danger of forgetting to get excited about fall color. But over the last few days the sun’s spotlight illuminated autumn’s very edges and gave me the reminder I needed to look up and out again. I’ve heard that the stars have aligned to give us a spectacular fall – we’ve had just the right amount of sun and rain over the summer and perfect temperatures now; no Hurricane Irene to brown the leaves prematurely like last year, and, knock wood, there aren’t any October snowstorms in the forecast. Whatever happens in the coming weeks, autumn already looks spectacular here. So bright and pretty that it’s hard for me to imagine that it will peak later. Maybe we’ll have a more gradual plateau of sustained gorgeousness…

Is fall shaping up to be a beauty in your garden too? – Are you remembering to look up?

The other day friend of mine and Blithewold’s left a bag full of these delicious looking things on my desk with a note suggesting they might make a good blog post. Indeed. I’ve never seen them before and I never can resist finding out more about weird things whether they show up on my desk or not.

They are azalea leaf and flower galls caused by a fungus amongus named Exobasidium vaccinii. It’s a weather-related blight probably brought on by our warm winter and wet late-spring into summer, that turns infected leaf and flower tissue into fleshy aliens. It affects azaleas, rhododendrons and camellias but isn’t usually life-threatening. Just ugly. Treatment involves nothing more than cutting them off the shrubs as my friend did and burying them or burning them. (Leaving them on someone’s desk as a novelty is an optional middle step.) And it’s best to catch the galls before they turn dusty white with spores or into gray knobs that indicate they’ve done their business.

They are called Pinkster apples because the Pinkster (or Pinxter or Pink) azalea (Rhodendron periclymenoides) is particularly susceptible and galls on its flowers turn pinkish. And in case you thought I was kidding about them looking delicious, I was and wasn’t. Some sources (including my own pinkster apple source) say that they’re a delicacy. But I can’t find any recipes to try, only warnings about how rhodies, especially the leaves, are poisonous.

I took a quick walk around to check out Blithewold’s rhododendrons and azaleas and didn’t spot any signs but judging by the contents of the bag, it may be a problem this year for other gardeners. Have you ever spotted anything like this on your azaleas? (Do you have a recipe for them?)

For this mid-May Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, I’m going to postpone the usual list of all of the amazing things that are blooming suddenly all at once and go into euphoric raptures about a single fantastic genus that has been blooming for a while now. One of them even kept last year’s blooms all winter.

Of all 2000 odd species of euphorbia in the world, we only have a half-dozen or so on the property. In a way that’s plenty because the ones we have are pretty great, and on the other hand it’s not nearly enough because who wouldn’t want more?

At the top of my favorite spurges list is Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’. Not only does it have stunning multi-colored foliage and fabulously intricate flying-saucer blooms but it looked fabulous through the winter. In fact, it still looked so good this spring that we weren’t sure if we should cut it back. We decided to cut a few plants here and there to within a couple inches of the ground, and we left a few standing, and are planning on using their older stems for arrangements. That’s one of the greatest things about euphorbia: they make really great nearly ever-lasting cut flowers.

Euphorbia amygdaloides ‘Purpurea’ (below left) spreads generously (rhizomatously) in shade but we have it in full sun too in the Rose Garden. We transplanted bunches of it around from underneath the chestnut rose and it pouted for a good year (or was it two?) before finally looking stunningly settled. Never give up on a euphorbia. Last year we also planted ‘Craigieburn’ (below right) in the cutting garden I think I like that one even better for the subtle range of colors in its foliage and the extra acid in the green of its flowers.

E. longifolia (below left) has been seeding itself around the North Garden and Display Garden for years, which is great because we always have the option of using it where it lands or hoiking it out to make room for something else. After it blooms (it stands about 2′ tall) we cut it back hard to encourage a new flush later in the summer. That’s a dangerous job because the sap of this one seems particularly caustic. Anyone who has ever gotten a bright red burning and wicked-itchy rash from spurge learns pretty quickly to wear body armor to work with it.

The cushion spurge (E. polychroma – above right) in the Rock Garden hasn’t self-sowed although it’s supposed to and I wish it would. It’s too cute. We also have ‘Bonfire’, which has bright orange blooms and red foliage, up in the Display Garden but we don’t have it in enough sun to show itself off properly.

I could go on because we also grow sticks-on-fire pencil cactus and crown-of-thorns in the greenhouse and those go to show how varied the genus can be. But I’m stuck on spurges. Which ones do you grow – or wish you did? For a look at what else is bloom (besides euphorbia) all over the country and the world, click on the links listed here.

So many of our favorite groundcovers have their day in the sun, so to speak, in the spring. Particularly the ones that are made for the shade. Before the trees leaf out they get the light they need to really take off. I never noticed before that Mukdenia rossii ‘Karasuba’, which is known more for its bright red and glossy fall foliage, has such pretty flowers. And I think the new foliage is handsomer now than ever.

You might never find where we hid the bergenia (hint: under the grape arbor) but it’s happier tucked away there than anywhere else we’ve tried it. I’m not sure which species this is (Ed, if you read this, please help!) but just look at that flower. Precious princess-pants. After living in Seattle where rough looking bergenia fill every streetside rockery, I never thought I’d think it was that special. But maybe this one is especially special. You get a prize if you can find it. (Finding it is the prize.)

You can’t miss the epimedium. It will fill up your view as you walk through the moongate. It’s amazing to me that such a delicate – and often expensive plant could be so prolific. It’s tough as nails and I say — we all say — the more the merrier. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t want such a beauty to spread its little wings wherever it could. (It grows so happily in dry shade that it’s as if we got it wrong about such sites being difficult.)

And of course there are the daffodils, groundcover-ers themselves swimming in a sea of periwinkle (Vinca minor). And the question of every day is what is the groundcover with the mottled red leaves? It’s trout lily (Erythronium americanum), one of our native wildflowers. Not many are in bloom yet as I write this but they’re coming. (Although they did have a big show last year and deserve a break.)

Now that spring has really sprung, there is so much to see, it might be impossible to notice it all. (I’ve tried.) The daffodils will continue to be in peak probably through the weekend and now that the tulips and cherry trees have started there’s no longer any reason at all to not visit right this minute.

Do you have a favorite spring groundcover? Or is there one that you like better in spring than any other time of year?