A little taste of spring

Things are a little busy for me with work and spring garden tasks, so forgive me if I'm a bit brief with some posts these next couple of weeks. Things move quickly in spring in St. Louis, and sometimes you have to take advantage of an early morning hour before the storms move in to get some work in the garden done.

I've got another nursery visit to write up, bamboo shooting season is just starting, and there are new plants to show you -- but today I just want to share a few photos with you that say "early Spring" in my garden. I don't have many tulips, but a few manage to keep returning, like the frilly-edged one above.

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I don't know about you, but this is how most volunteers show up in my garden:

Not as individual seedlings that arrived via bird or the wind, but as a horde coming up right under their parent's former position. (In this case I think they are feverfew seedlings, with a couple of violet babies mixed in.)  Thinning is so necessary!


Agastache emerging, purple and fuzzy and wonderful:

These are either Agastache foeniculum, Agastache rugosa -- which is a bigger plant with larger leaves that have more deeply serrated edges -- or a hybrid between the two. I have dozens of these throughout the garden now. The bees are getting excited!


Of course there are daffodils, one plant that deer won't touch:

The yellow ones are fine, but I prefer having a mixture that includes white ones that are a bit wild...

...and some that are more traditional:

I'm not sure where the ones that had pinkish centers went -- perhaps they're late bloomers? I can't remember.


The Japanese maples are all budding...

...which makes a nice contrast with the leaves that still remain from last autumn, when an early cold spell zapped all of the leaves before they could fall.


And this is peak season for moss here...

...as the heat will soon dry them out in all but the shadiest and moistest of areas.


There's always so much to see (and do) in Spring!

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