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.)

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.

Yesterday’s snow flurries and bitter chill felt a little like a set back but March still somehow manages to take another two steps forward for every one back. It’s no longer enough to patrol the garden for changes only once a week. It’s much better (March better?) to take a daily march (enough with the puns) outside and goodness knows the timing is really perfect for taking a break from the horrifying headlines that I can’t seem to look away from when I’m cooped up indoors.

If I didn’t scan the gardens every day now I could have easily missed the Iris reticulata that only blooms for a millisecond (i.e. a week) and I might not catch the Lonicera fragrantissima, which refused to burst in time for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day today (hosted as always by Carol of May Dreams Gardens.) I predict it will take another day or so of sun before its scent lures our rare early spring visitors to a forgotten corner of the Rose Garden, and gives us something to do with our noses while we prune the roses (next week).

No one could miss the witch hazels that have been in bloom for a month but I wouldn’t want to lose another single day with them. Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would wait for forsythia when there are witch hazels (Hamamelis spp.) in February, Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) – open just enough today to count as blooming – and spice bush (Lindera benzoin) on its way, all for earlier cheerful yellowness.

And getting down – way down- to take a look at the crocus is an excellent warm-up for all of the getting down and up again we’re going to have to start doing so soon now, she says while massaging her stiff lower back…

Are you marching right along with March? How about your garden?

My definition of “bloom” gets pretty loose this time of year and in order to participate in Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, I am not above breaking all the rules. Given that it’s the middle of January and we’re in New England, it’s perfectly acceptable – preferable even – to have snow instead of an abundance of flowers in the gardens. And isn’t the snowscape as pretty in its own quiet way as any full summer garden?

And of course we’re lucky to have a greenhouse full of interesting plants, some in bloom, some not. I highly recommend taking a moment to focus on any houseplants you may have, or visiting a greenhouse (ours is open) whenever your eyes start to glaze over from too much catalog reading. I find it helpful to groom and water and fuss with plants when the gajillion varieties of basil suddenly start to sound like they might all be exactly the same only different, and when I can’t decide between ‘Violet Jasper’ and ‘Chocolate Stripes’ tomatoes.

Clarity always comes to me. (The answer is: both, and…!)  Does touching plants help you make your winter decisions too?

For lists and pictures of what might actually be in bloom around the blogosphere, visit May Dreams Gardens.

Thanks to Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day (hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gardens) I have gotten into the habit of checking the Higan cherry (Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’) in the Rose Garden for blooms this time of year. Just like clock-work, as of a couple of warmish days ago, it had opened a few nearly invisible flowers. (Now that the temperature has plummeted again, the safety is probably back on its bloom trigger.) I have to wonder though, what is it thinking to bloom at all in December? Will it be pollinated? Would it be able to set fruit? What’s the point?

I’m curious too about the winter heaths (Erica carnea ‘Springwood White’) beginning to bloom now – they must have willing pollinators on their native European moorlands but will they be worked on here? By whom? And the camellias in our greenhouse – ‘Debutante’ is our earliest to bloom – strike me as a little bit sad for not being likely to attract any kind of attention besides ours. (And we might be disappointed that while it looks a little bit like a rose, it doesn’t smell like one.)

I’ll admit that I have a one track mind right now and can only chalk it up to planning a feast for our pollinators in the gardens next year. Meanwhile, I know I should be grateful for any blooms that brighten a dark December even if we human gardeners are the only ones who get to enjoy them.