Springtime

Eastern redbud and carpenter bee

Temps have been consistently in the 80's in the last week. Everything is coming alive with amazing rapidity. The trees are leafing out all at once. All of the different shades of spring green are so fresh and beautiful, with the silvery green of the white oaks the loveliest of all.

The garden is outstripping my ability to clean up before the spring show. I decided to whack back the beautyberries next to the driveway this year, as they were really starting to lean out into the driveway.

The Red-Shouldered Hawks are feeding their babies in the same nest that they used last year, about a hundred yards west of the house near the top of a large Loblolly Pine. Some summer birds are back: Ovenbirds, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, White-eyed Vireos. Ruby-crowned Kinglets don't breed here -- they migrate up to the northern US and Canada to breed -- but they linger here until May and sing their gurgling stutter song for a month before they leave. A more adorable bird has never graced our woods.

The cool weather before this past week was perfect for the first serviceberry that bloomed. Days in the 50's and nights in the 30's are perfect for them. The ones that bloomed this week blew quickly.

I've never gotten a very good full scale picture of a serviceberry. It's
prettier than it looks in this picture. It has the look of white lace.

The daffs were reduced to limp ribbons by the warm winds, but more are on the
way. 'Thalia' doesn't love baking heat but they were lovely while they lasted.

The daff display in the big bed should be much more impressive next year; many of the bulbs that went in this year went in very late (just a month ago), and even the Campernelles from last year are taking a break after their first year of being in the ground here and blooming. I still have at least another third of the bed to plant, and I'd like to plant daffs of the jonquil class in the low part in front of it too. Scott Odgen writes in his book Garden Bulbs for the South "Narcissus jonquilla and its relations inherit tolerance to dampness, which suits them especially to the heavy cotton soils of the South... jonquils naturalize in bar ditches and other moist spots where their wild companions include true rushes."

The edges of the beds and the lawn looks like a fluffy crazy quilt of grass, clover, lamium, henbit, and speedwell. Although it looks crazy and yes, messy, the bees are just going crazy over it. First the honeybees came out, then the little native bees with faces full of red-orange Lamium pollen, then bees of every sort.

If you want to attract bees to your garden, plant one of these!

Bees love Eastern Redbuds. The picture below doesn't even begin to express the density of bees. At its peak it was actually necessary to walk slowly past the tree as not to bump into too many bees in their almost frantic comings and goings! The tree was an amazing sight, and standing next to it was like being in a giant bee hive.

For the first time in about 5 years I saw some pansies at Lowe's that I really liked. I didn't get them in the ground until late October so they didn't do anything all winter but they are taking off now. I think their soft butter yellow and violet blue shades are lovely.

The wild Crabapple tree is more than half opened up! I shall have to get some pictures of it tomorrow. When it blooms I think it's the most beautiful tree in all the world.