Hellebores Finally Opening

Looking back over the last four years I have been keeping this blog, it is clear that this has been the longest winter.  Last year I had Hellebore pictures a week earlier, and in 2013, they were almost three weeks earlier!  So now they are up and blooming after so much cold and rain. 

These first two pictures are of the same clump, my earliest bloomer, from different sides.  It grows in a place near the entrance of the labyrinth garden that disappears behind other plants in the summer, so it enjoys the opportunity to shine forth with the yellow and pink shades.

This purple beauty grows in the North garden.  I had planned on trading its location with day lilies last fall, but with all that I was doing and bad weather on the weekends, nothing got moved.  I hesitate to move them all in the spring, but that might be what is necessary.  This coming autumn I will again be busy all week, and unable to do many projects.

Finally, there is this more demure variety.  The flowers will be more dramatic as the flowers open up, but even so it brings color into a still dreary landscape. 

The crocus in the grass have finished their bloom, and there are a few crocus blooming in the labyrinth.  They are survivors of the rabbit rampage last spring.  I hope a few more show up in the weeks to come.

Freezing Rain

So there has been freezing rain all day today, and all the plants are getting a think coat of ice.  The most vulnerable are the pencil hollies, with very long, thin, vertical branches that are now bending over sideways from the weight of the ice.  I hope nothing breaks, and that the bent limbs will return to shape once the air warms up tomorrow morning.  But there is nothing I can do without potentially causing greater danger to them.

Here you can see the paperbark maple, with its flaking layers of red bark underneath the ice.

Then there is the Christmas Folly, built by my beloved out of left over magnolia and spruce branches.  It looked like an exotic Christmas tree! I was ready to take it apart because it is getting quite brown, but this is a fitting way to have a dramatic last fling.

Usually by the end of February I have cut the tall grasses, cleaned up the flower beds and gotten them ready for a new layer of mulch.  That is going to have to wait. I wonder how long. I am tired of waiting for better weather so I can go outside.