Spring teaser

Today's nice weather gave me a case of spring fever..
So I went and cut some forsythia and pussy willow branches to force into bloom in the house.
Imagine my delight to find this:

And the whole arrangement:

Whoah!! You really picked a lot!! What a great idea!

I'd say spring is here with a huge flock of robins on the yard heading up your way, but now I see huge flakes of snow coming down on my forsythias...? Oh, to be patient!

Had Sandhill cranes over head a few days ago, does that mean anything?

I put off pruning the top of the forsythia for this very reason..I always get the winter blues the worst at about this time..and what better way to fight them off than with a bouquet of spring blooms?
(and lemme tell ya..this forsythia is a monster..we found a mullberry tree buried in it while looking for the fence, this summer lol)
I am still looking for my first robin of the spring...now that the days are getting longer and longer, I am sure it will be any day now!

artemiss...don't know if it's a coincidence or not but we have noticed huge flocks of birds in our woods- they are so loud I would like to shoot the shotgun just to scare them off...but they are probably filling at least 9 huge trees - perhaps they are on their way back up to you! :o) Shades of Alfred Hitchcock and his movie the birds...my 9 yr old wants to know if they are gonna come get us LOL I tell her only if she's bad....

Beautiful 'Early Early spring Bouquet' LOL
I know what you mean about this time of year.
No one is allowed to say the "F" word in my home ... it is called, "The 2nd month of the year".
I like what notMartha had to say ... "My spring begins March 1st"

My Lilacs have buds ....

The forsythia will be bloomed out in a day or two, and I will add another updated pic..
We have another winter storm coming too..bleh!!!

oh I have spring fever too. The weather here was so nice I could wear a sweater. I potted up my petunia volunteers in the sunroom and made a nice hanging basket with some baby wing begonia cuttings added. I just needed to get my hands in the dirt! lol

Our weather was wonderful today too. We have had a really mild winter. I was able to work in my yard all day yesterday with only a long sleeve shirt. The roses are all putting on leaves, daylilies and chives starting to peep up through the mulch. I am spreading seeds today. We can still get frosts until Easter, but I just can't wait. I don't start seeds indoors as they always do better for me to just toss them in the ground. I pruned my peach trees last week and noticed they had plenty of buds forming, hopefully they won't be frozen if we do get an Easter freeze!

Our June Gold peaches are blooming at work...they sure are pretty!

Gosh- we are stilll below normal in temperatures for the year, but after the fiasco of last year where we had spring in March, and winter again in April, I am not sorry one little bit!

Lavender, what petunia volunteers are you potting up? Surely you don't have petunia seedlings in your garden already(?)

Saturday is the first day of spring (March 1) as far as I'm concerned, too -- the sunlight starts getting stronger and things start to sort of look alive. Tomorrow and Saturday I'll be working out in the garden, raking leaves from under the snow that's left, LOL! I've never done that before, so should be interesting. I have to clean out the beds more because the direct sown seeds need contact with soil, not leaves and garden debris.

CP, Zone 8 NM is sounding pretty good right about now!

Artemiss, are the Forsythias in bloom there? Or just your branches? All I have a Hammemalis (Witch Hazel) and I sure wish I had sprung for an expensive hybrid instead of the one I have. The flowers are small and sort of a brownish yellow. :(

Suzy

I have pink wave petunias that sprang up in my overwintering pots in the sunroom. I decided to put them in my hanging pots since they are blooming already. It has made winter a little more festive here and given me the opportunity to play in the dirt.

Lavender - I bet that gets your juices going for spring to get sprung!

Illoquin - you are so right about last years fiasco with the warm up and then that horrid freeze..even down here in the carolinas we had BIG issues - my crape mytrles never bloomed because it nipped all the buds and no coaxing would get them to re-bud...my yard looked like a sheet factory with everything I covered up LOL

Just my cut and forced forsythia branches are blooming..but the pussy willow is starting to peek out.

very lovely!

Lavender - That is awesome, I didn't know you could do that! (Petunias inside) What else do you overwinter, and more importantly, how do you keep things like whitefly from coming in with the plants? That's always my problem.

Speaking of awesome, Artemiss, that is one BIG bouquet of spring!
Those things are $2.50 each piece at the florist, and pussy willows are even more expensive!

Red, it was too cold here for sheets -- electric blankets, maybe LOL!

I htink we had a lot of nights at 23 degrees, and a full week in April of day and night temps below freezing...it was pitiful, especially on older and established plants. The surpprise I didn't think about: the nuts here -- beech nuts, all the way to black walnuts all got zapped -- the squirrels didn't have much to hide/put away this fall. Of course the good old Sweetgum balls didn't miss a beat, durn it!

Suzy

Illoquin, My sunroom is pretty basic 11x12 and wall to wall plants in the winter. I have a plant ladder I bring in and grow wave petunias on the top in the summer and all winter the seedlings pop up in all the pots below it. They seem to be pretty fertile plants and they bloom very young. Every spring I have more of them than I started with. I over winter gerberas too and have a system for them that works for me. My flowering plants in the winter in there are geraniums, begonias, kalanchoe (two kinds), petunias, and a three season old nasturtium (who says they are annuals?!) that bloom away for most of the winter. I have several different desert and tropical foliage plants as well. My star jasmine is just now breaking dormancy and budding out. I also overwinter my rosemary. I never treat my plants before coming inside for the winter and have never seen any insect problems. It stays between 49-60 in there all winter and I keep things on the dry side for most of the winter. The only heat I have in there is from a space heater.

That sunroom sounds delightful! I bring several cactus into our unheated garage for the winter. I have never thought of having petunias as houseplants. Great idea.

Illoquin, our frosts that sometimes happen may zap the fruit trees, but they are never really "hard freezes". And I find it interesting how the different elevations are affected. For instance my oleandars can be damaged some winters to where we cut them all the way back. While my neighbors, who live at a lower elevation won't even have theirs touched. This year they all look great with just a few yellow tips to prune off, the rest stayed green all winter so there will be lots of blooms this year.

Thanks...it makes me smile when I walk in the door.
And at that price, maybe I should start selling my prunings lol!

You should! I would buy some lol