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It’s been a strange cool Spring

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Are you having a cold and rainy spring in your area? Or are you having strange and turbulent weather? We seem to be having all of the above here in Toronto.

Two weekends ago it was cold and we actually had snow with thunder and lightening storms .. yes and odd mix, but it happened – more than once. It’s true. Then it warmed up … then it cooled down again and then it rained and rained and rained.

Currently we’re hovering between periods of torrential rain storms and then warm sunny periods. It actually reached 22 Celsius (72 F) today which is quite warm for us in April – especially this year given that we had snow less than two weeks ago (which was really really unusual).

First Crocus of spring

I guess the good news about the cool rainy damp Spring is that well … April showers bring May flowers … and well they bring April flowers too. I’ve had Crocus’ blooming since about March 20th and thanks to the cool weather a good portion of them are still blooming. Usually they’re GONE by now. I’m also enjoying my Snow Drops this year … often they come and go so fast than if I blink I miss them, but since we’ve had an extended cool period they’ve stuck around instead of blooming at lightening speed and disappearing.

My Glories of the Snow are in bloom in the backyard garden beds and the a few in the front are beginning to bloom this week. A few Dwarf Irises are also blooming. Other flowers that are growing and preparing to bloom are several Hyacinths, daffodils, tulips and I’m sure a few others that I can’t remember off the tops of my head. Basically everything is greening up and growing leaves including most of my roses. At least the heavy dose of snow that we had over the winter covered all the plants well and protected them so I believe most of my plants survived the winter cold. We don’t always get very good snow cover here in Toronto so I tend to worry about my plants in the deep cold of winter but not this past winter.

Blooming crocuses

Overall my garden is healthy and happy … I’m just waiting for the weather to warm up and for all my flowers to start growing and to begin blooming … but what gardener isn’t?

Tell me about your garden.






Just about every day something new is blooming in my garden

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Wow I’m BAD. I run the Green Thumb Sunday meme and I haven’t done one since last November. Yep, bad bad bad meme creator!

Ok it’s time to get back on track. This meme is still alive … barely, but I know some of our members are still posting Green Thumb Sunday posts regularly, at least more regularly than I have been lately.

I don’t have a good excuse for my absence. As usual I haven’t been feeling well thanks to my Crohn’s, but yes, I’ve still been gardening and so far this year I’m amazed with my garden. I just need to start posting about what I’m seeing and doing more often, now don’t I?

So … if you’ve been participating in Green Thumb Sunday or waiting around to see if it was going to start up again … come on, let’s see some Green Thumb Posts. (please).

As I said above I’ve been amazed with my garden this year. I think it started waking up in February … way way early! By March 15th I had my first Crocuses blooming. Usually they don’t bloom until near the end of March.

First crocus to bloom in my garden this year

This was the first crocus to bloom in my backyard this year. It bloomed on March 15th! Shortly thereafter more and more crocus popped up. They’re all done now though.

Years ago when I first started gardening I planted Snow Drops .. but I rarely ever saw them. Either they bloomed too early for me to notice or it warmed up to fast and they faded within days … unnoticed. It was obvious this year that they’ve been growing, multiplying and thriving as I had a few large clumps come up in March.

Finally caught some Snow Drops blooming

I even had a few tiny Dwarf Danfordia Irises come up too

Dwarf Irises near the end of their bloom

They’re a little faded in this photo as they were already wilting by the time I noticed them. They didn’t last long. We’ve had some warm weather in March and April which wasn’t all that good for making Spring flowers last.

Here’s a shot of my center garden bed … full of red and white Tulips, Heuchera, Astilbe, perennial Geranium, and tiny shoots of Phlox and Hostas and probably a few other plants that I’m forgetting … I took this picture on April 18th. I just wish that I’d pushed the hoop that I use to contain the Phlox when it grows down a bit before I took the photo!

Tulips, Heuchera and lots of other plants in the garden bed

This is a wide shot of my garden. It’s small, but for the middle of April there’s a heck of a lot of plants up. All of my roses have fully leafed out now and more and more plants are coming up each day. Right now I’ve got Daffodils and Hyacinths that are just about finished blooming and I think my Glories of the Snow are pretty much gone. I have a feeling that I’ll have roses about two weeks earlier than usual this year too.

Wide shot of my small garden - everythings coming up

And Finally this is my dog, Midnight, enjoying some sun in the garden. She’s growing and blooming too. She’s two and a half years old now and still very puppy like in a lot of ways … just thankfully not quite as hyper as she was a year or so ago! LOL

My Labrador Retriever enjoying some sun in the garden

How is your garden doing? What’s blooming? What’s growing?

Blooms and greenery everywhere

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Every time I look out my kitchen window or go into my backyard I’m amazed at how much it’s filled in.

It seems like the plants are growing within hours … not just days! That’s one of the things I love most about Spring – how fast things change and green up.

This is a photo of one of my raised garden beds in the backyard.

The “oval” as I call it separates the patio area from the lawn and garden portion of the backyard.

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There are even more tulips throughout the garden beds than there were when I took that photo.

The Pasque flowers that I have in a very small area near the side of the house are blooming now too. Here’s a shot of a Pasque flower bud. The flower opened and started blooming on Thursday.

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Unfortunately these flowers don’t seem to last very long so I expect they will be finished by sometime early next week. Maybe longer if the cool weather sticks around.

For a peek at my Grape Hyacinth (Muscari) and my Daffodils take a peek at my other blogs.

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