A harvest of daffodils

Wow, what difficult choices to make this month for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day!  While the weather continues to dance between super hot (85 degrees this week) and freeze warning for tonight the plants have been accelerating their flowering to make up for lost time.  One of the purposes of this blog is kind of a pictorial record keeping that allows me to go back and compare what was happening in other years at the same point in time.  While I can see some plants that are right on time (like the bloodroot or the trout lilies) this is on the whole the latest flowering for many species that I have seen in the past 5 years.  During the past two weeks I’ve finally been able to do a lot of planting of things carried up from North Caroline or ordered in from Washington State.  Even the vegetable garden finally got started last week.  The ground tilled up really nicely but I’ve never put peas in this late.

I could post many pictures of the beautiful daffodils that are coming up in the yard, pasture and forest, but I’m going to focus on some of the smaller and more unusual flowers.  I brought up a hardy orchid from Plant Delights and have put it in the Monolith garden.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t freeze tonight.

Calanthe ‘Kojima Yellow’

Nearby is a very hardy little yellow corydalis from the NARGS plant exchange last fall.

Corydalis cheilanthifolia

It’s fern-like foliage should be well-suited to the new garden which has many bulbs and shade-lovers for when the leaves come out.  A couple of the bulbs are species tulips, including this lovely blue-eyed tulip.

Tulipa humilis ‘Alba Caerulea Oculata’

Tulipa humilis ‘Magenta Queen’

Back in the alpine bed there are some more species tulips.

Tulipa aff. turkestanica

Nearby is a little Primula that I liked the pictures of in the Far Reaches online catalog.  In fact, I must have liked that color a lot because it turned out I had bought the same plant last fall as well.  Fortunately it is a charmer.

Primula x forsteri ‘Bileckii’

Next to it I’ve put an Oxalis which also looks like a keeper.

Oxalis enneaphylla rosea

The Daphnes were particularly hard hit by this winter’s wicked twists and turns.  The normally reliable Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ is a mess.  Most of the flowers were frozen off and the shrub looked highly questionable but I am seeing new growth now on what looked like dead wood so it seems like just a one year loss.  On the other hand three of the new small Daphne’s bit the dust and only one has survived.  Probably the best looking Daphne on the property is the diminutive Lawrence Crocker which is just coming into flower.

Daphne ‘Lawrence Crocker’

A couple of old favorites are showing up this week.  The little double flowered anomenella is fully in bloom as is its single-flowered cousin.

Anemonella thalictroides ‘shoaf’s double pink’

Anemonella thalictroides

The Epimediums are starting to bloom with ‘Lilac Seedling’ leading the way.

Epimedium grandiflorum ‘Lilac Seedling’

Jeffersonia dubia far outdoes its american cousin, not only for beauty of flower, but for length of bloom.  The J. diphylla was gone before I even had a chance to photograph it.

Jeffersonia dubia

My favorite little trillium is Roadrunner.

Trillium pusillum ‘Roadrunner’

It’s hard to match the wavy edges to the flowers and the dark foliage.

Other interesting flowers are the Hermodactylus and Pusatilla.

Hermodactylus tuberosa

The black on this iris relative is almost like velvet.

One of the troughs has a cute little pasque flower that I got from my son.

Pusatilla patens

Let me close this posting with one of many Hellebores so that you don’t think I don’t appreciate the Hellebore flowers in the yard right now.

Helleborus hybridus Golden Lotus

Even with the weather gods being incredibly fickle there is much to be thankful for in the flowering kingdom.