Spring is Here!

It’s a beautiful rainy weekend. The piles of snow in the parking lots are dwindling away. For the second weekend in a row I hit up Starbucks for grounds, but it was too early in the day. They never seem to know when their official grounds program starts, but the folks running the bar waffled something about “when Spring comes” (to which I smiled, and pointed out that Spring started a week ago) and “when the snow melts”. (Dude, have you looked out the window lately?)

I’ll just keep going back until their boss says go.

I can’t blame them for not realizing that Spring has come. . . just yesterday the ground was frozen, and until I went looking, I couldn’t see any signs of Spring, either. But with a little peeking the evidence was all over. Here’s a sample:

My garlic has popped up! I stuffed a few leftover cloves in the ground last Autumn, and poof!



The yarrow is putting out new growth. These were weeds from our so-called lawn which I transplanted into a bed last year. I hope it’s a native variety.



Some sort of moss at the edge of the woods is growing like mad with all this glorious wet weather.



Under a protective layer of fallen leaves, the obediant plant is sprouting. I’m ambivalent about this plant, seeing as it is anything but obedient, and will eventually have to be beaten back with a stick; but any new green is a pleasure right now!



The lilies are poking up! Last year the blossoms were spent and the foliage saggy by the time we moved in, so I don’t yet know what sort of lilies these are. But there are an abundance of them around the shed, so today I dug up a bunch of the tubers and transplanted them up front. (I like to tell myself that I was rescuing them from being mangled by the shed door, or being lost in the bramble of other plants behind the shed, where they won’t be appreciated.) But mostly I just wanted to play in the yard.



While removing garbage from the witchhazel patch, I found a tape measure, a baseball, a large sheet of plastic, and an entire stack of slate stepping-stones, which I pulled out from beneath ten-year’s growth of tree roots one after the other, like nested Russian dolls.