spring showers

Years ago Mom got tired of the maintenance of the front gardens, and so she dug them all up, dumped the contents into the brush on the edge of the yard, and filled the gardens up with pea stones and a couple carefully-placed azalea bushes and bird baths.

We didn’t give much thought to what we dumped, aside from Riley Mae being rather morose over the loss of the annually-blooming mini daffodils. But lo and behold, I think each and every bulb and plant that got tossed aside successfully rooted and sprung back to life in the brush.

Each year the bulbs continued to spread along the edge of the yard: snowdrops, crocuses, grape hyacinth, a couple different kinds of large daffodils, and, of course, the beloved mini daffodils.

baby crocuses drinking up the spring showers

Last year, in the late days of spring (or maybe it was early summer?), Mom got struck with the ingenious idea to transplant all of the indestructible bulbs around the perimeter of the ~~veggie~~ zinnia garden in the backyard.

Riley Mae and I were immediately on board with the idea, and so the three of us spent a couple very hot mornings out in the yard, digging up all the plants and transplanting them into the raised bed.

what once was a veggie garden has now been turned into a thriving zinnia garden (we plant our veggies in the second garden out back now), and that one single sunflower was generously planted by the neighborhood birds

I remember absolutely sweating, nearly overheating, and coming up with a few handfuls of poison ivy along the way. But we successfully ended up with enough bulbs to fill the entire bed, with hardly any open spots to pop the last stragglers in (not to mention all the day lilies that we dug up to fill the beds on both ends of the garden!).

We were super proud of our work, and we were so excited for the next spring to come to see our vision come to life (we’re very into long-term-satisfaction projects around here). And since the blooming of the plants is staggered, we should be able to see color out the kitchen window til May or June (I think the hyacinth are typically the last of the spring bulbs to bloom).

so many snowdrops are popping up that it’s hard to believe that there will be room for anything else

Now here we are, the next spring has [almost] arrived, and with the warmer temps and the large amount of rain we’ve been getting: the first snowdrops and crocuses are up and waiting for the next sunny day to open their petals.

(fingers crossed for tomorrow!)

Every year my and Mom’s birthdays (March 14^th and 16^th) are marked by the first crocuses blooming — one of the first tell-tale signs of spring here — and this year they emerged a week or two earlier than usual.

I guess our good friend Punxsutawney Phil was right when he predicted an early spring.

Each morning after I feed the chickens, I check on their progress, and each morning more and more little fresh greens are poking up out of the stones. I think even the large purple hyacinths that I bought from Stop & Shop last year made it through the winter and are starting to show their faces! I want to add more in different colors (because not only are they gorgeous, but they also smell absolutely divine), but I’m not certain that we’ll even have room for more!

I found a little blue egg in the nesting box the other day, which was surprising, given the fact that Lizzie (bottom right) turns 10, and Mary Todd (bottom left) turns 11 in April. I can’t believe that my girls are so old. I don’t know the exact age of our newest addition (Chicken Little, the barred rock, joined the flock when I found her sitting alone in the snow one bitterly cold morning), but I assume she’s much younger than either of my little ladies. All three girls get along like old friends, and it’s pretty funny to watch them together, since Chicken Little is a normal sized lady, and Lizzie and Mary Todd are tiny bantams

Seeing the little plants double (or maybe triple) in size every day has sparked a significant amount of joy in me, and with the way these bulbs spread, I predict that this entire bed should be absolutely overflowing with flowers very soon 🤍