Spring is coming!

[HansV]

Crocuses.jpg

[ChrisGreaves]

Crocuses.jpg

A lovely image, so thanks for that. But I had cause to dive into my Gardening^[1] Diary where I found this

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April 13 2021: The pale purple crocuses are blooming!

And note, that these were just the pale ones ...
(signed) "In the middle of a two-day 40cm snow storm" of Bonavista
^[1]Yes, Gardening; not a typo. Not warm enough for Gardenias here
Cheers, Chris

[stuck]

lots of crocus (and snowdrops) blooming here too.

We've even got a hyacinth in bloom in a trough on our patio. We don't normally see hyacinth flowers until April but the extremely mild weather last autumn / early winter made the bulb start to push up leaves before Christmas. The weather has been colder since then but not cold enough to damage the young leaf growth so this bulb has had a massive head start this year.

Ken

[HansV]

One park here also has lots of daffodils on bloom.

[stuck]

There are a few daffodils out in our village but none in our garden.

[ChrisGreaves]

...We don't normally see hyacinth flowers until April ...

I think that I got smart last fall. Planted Hyacinths in six tubs, left them outside, and starting February 1st started bringing them in every half-month. The second tub is due to come inside tomorrow.

My idea was that arrival inside the kitchen (16c-19c) would fool them into thinking that they had overslept, and so my house would erupt in a flood of fragrant blossom that should see me through to June.

Cheers, Chris

[PaulB]

Meanwhile, the view out my front window... (sigh)

[HansV]

Different climates...

[PaulB]

Yeah, no kidding!

[ChrisGreaves]

Different climates...

Also, distinctly different lengths of seasons!
Cheers, Chris

[StuartR]

The Olympic Park in Stratford had daffodils by January 20th, but the daffs in my garden aren't going to be out for another week or so.

[HansV]

That is really early!

[StuartR]

The daffodils are always very early there

[HansV]

We get snowdrops in January; crocuses and daffodils come out in February.

[DocAElstein]

We is a few degrees and days behind the average of Europe, but I think I found one,

Found a purple One.JPG

Found a little purple One.JPG

( That slightly messy bit of land is in the no go area which I illegally occupied and use as a buffer zone to keep the authorities at bay. It’s turning into a nice nature area now, since they don’t dare to maintain it anymore. Later in Sommer there the wheel barrows and “Sun Flower Fence” is erected, https://i.postimg.cc/nryQqn05/Muss-bald ... binden.jpg )

[ChrisGreaves]

... and “Sun Flower Fence” is erected,

Scrap the sunflowers. Go for Jerusalem Artichokes.
You'll get the sunflowers from them AND edible tubers AND mine grow to nine-feet tall.
(OK. In the second image they had caught a bit of wind ...)
Cheers, Chris

[DocAElstein]

Now there’s an idea, I might need to be a bit careful about endangering the traffic though, - there at the front I am on a major road on the edge of the town connecting to the autobahn. If I start messing with that it might be going a bit too far, I can cope with the local Cops and “Beamtes”, but I don’t want the Feds on my back… talking of backs, I got my back covered, so to speak…. it will take you a while to top this…. So a bit over 20 years ago I bought 5 plastic bags at about 5 Deutsch Marks a bag and in each was 25 strange things that looked like a strange grotesque Frankenstein mutation of very small cut off tree branch bits with some hair growing out of them. I buried them Hair down in a long row, just outside my property along the back lane.
Some neighbours tried the same sort of thing behind their garden fence, and nothing happened.
All but three of mine survived and have grown into things I keep having to cut back every year at about 20 feet. ( The trick: So I have a lot of stuff just behind them which I wanted to hide with these “things”. So I put a large temporary roof over all that, and sloped so that all rain water dropped on these things. How they sprouted so well has amazed everyone.
So my conclusion is that the things in the bag were Gremlin entrails)

Adult Gremlin Entrails.JPG

[ChrisGreaves]

... I might need to be a bit careful about endangering the traffic though, ...

Nah! Traffic will drop off as soon as the Artichokes get above five feet.
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

More signs of spring:

Blossom.jpg

[GeoffW]

Meanwhile, it's a pleasant summer down by our local lake. There was a group playing music, and there was an audience, enjoying the music with their picnic and wine, watching the sun set over the lake.

Lake 2.jpg

IMG20230225195220_copy_1152x520.jpg