Springish

It's snowed a couple times this week, not much but a little. 

When I left on Saturday, I did the glance back at the house, just to make sure that the garage door had closed and so forth, that glance you do, and saw that there were a couple bits of yellow from crocus blooming.

Then the snows came.  But this morning, I went out and took a couple of pictures.  I really like the first picture.

 

 

 

One of the things I enjoy about the blog is that you can look back and see when you post about things.  I was thinking that our spring is unusually early this year, but looking back, I can see that I often have pictures of crocus up in mid-March, so spring's pretty much on track with many other years.

 

These are all from the area where I tried to make a crocus smile the fall before last.  This year, a few crocus are up, but not at all enough to tell that there's supposed to be a pattern.

 

I forced some bulbs this fall/spring, and now have a couple of tulips blooming in the house.  Unfortunately, I've had a really bad infestation of aphids, which killed some of the tulips as they were coming up.  They also killed some of the artichoke plants, much to my dismay.  I finally got to the point where I got some insecticidal soap, and I get a paper towel wet with the soap and then gently wipe down the leaves, killing some aphids from the wiping, more than anything, I think.  It grosses me out for some reason, but I'm desperate to try to save the remaining artichokes, so I do it every few days. 

 

At any rate, here's a close up of some tulip pollen.  (The flower is leaning a bit, so the photo isn't actually on its side.)