Spring Fever

The snow has all melted, the days are (mostly) warm, the Crocuses are up, and the Daffodils are even starting to bloom.  It's now official...

Crocus chrysanthum 'Romance'

it's finally Spring!

After this long winter, hungry critters are coming out of the woodwork.  I'm almost relieved to see that there are still deer alive after the incredible amount of snow we got.  They romped through my front garden, biting the tips off of the Crocuses and Tulips.  They even nibbled some Hyacinths, which are supposed to be poisonous, so they must have been pretty desperate.

The deer bit off the tips of the Crocus, pulling out some of the bulbs in the process.

The bees were out as soon as the weather warmed up, emerging even ahead of the Pussy Willows and other early spring food sources.  For a couple days, all the Crocuses that were saved from the deer were being swarmed by the hungry bees.  I don't think I've even seen my Crocuses so popular before!

Thankfully, it wasn't too long before the Pussy Willows started flowering their distinctive silky catkins, quickly followed by the little blooms of the Maple trees, and the bees dispersed to find more plentiful food.

One early warm day, I even saw a butterfly flying by.  It was a strange sight to see, as I felt that we had just been shoveling snow a few days before.

Iris reticulata

Now that it's Spring, it's time to take stock of the garden.  Thankfully most everything made it through, including a few that I was surprised about.  I was very happy to see new shoots of the woodland Mayapples, which had barely made it through last summer, poking through the dirt.

The strange shoots of Mayapples coming up

There are a few dead-looking plants and empty holes in the garden, but I'm still holding out hope for a few more weeks before digging anything up.  Other than that and a few shrubs with broken branches, most of the damage we sustained from the winter actually occurred inside the house.  Due to an ice dam (something I had never heard of until this winter), some water soaked in under one of our upstairs floors, so we are in the process of getting that fixed. We were fairly lucky, though; I know a lot of people, especially those with older homes, that had a lot of water damage to their walls due to ice dams this year.

Now that the snow is all melted, we have started all our outdoor projects.  Our backyard is soon going to look very different; we are getting a patio built, which Mr. Red House has been looking forward to for a very long time.  (What is it with men and patios?  I think it's a barbecuing thing...)  We've also been working on building raised beds for the vegetable garden, as the plants did not fare as well as I liked last year in the existing soil, even though I had amended it somewhat.  Mr. Red House is building the beds, and I am painting them - red to match, of course!

new raised beds being built

While Mr. Red House is excited about the patio, I'm very excited about a very different brand new addition to our backyard: a Red Trillium!

Trillium erectum

I bought this little guy as a bare root back in February at the Boston Flower & Garden Show.  It sat in my refrigerator until I could finally plant it in the woods out back, and I am so happy to see it actually flower.

I am also keeping busy with starting probably hundreds of seeds, as well as working on plans for expanding the front garden... by a goodly amount.  Mr. Red House thinks I am a little crazy for wanting so much space for gardening, which I very well might be.  I might have caught a bad case of gardening Spring Fever.

But after this past winter, can you blame me?