Saturday, March 24, 2012

Pleasant Surprises


Today was a perfectly lovely day to be outside in the garden.  Even before we went outdoors we had the wonderful surprise of seeing the male red fox making his rounds in the garden.  It's always wonderful to see the fox in the garden, but today it was an extremely pleasant surprise.  It has been perhaps a week or more since we found the female red fox dead  next to the road not far from here.  We wondered if the male would wander off to search for a new mate.  It was good to see that he is still around!  When I did get outside I was surprised to see my Dutchman's breeches in flower.  This plant and its flowers appeared so quickly. I'm pretty  sure two days ago there was no sign anything.


It was a little surprising to see my pink trout lily pushing up through the leaves.  So far there is no sign of the wild trout lilies that are so numerous here.  I surprised a yellow shafted flicker and got a fabulous view of the bird and the yellow underside of his wings as he flew away.  I guess he was busy eating ants and didn't see me on my garden tour. It's early for him to be here.

These warm March days have made the garden a very pleasant place to be. It has been a delightful preview of things to come, but cold weather is coming back. I hope it doesn't bring too many unpleasant surprises!

4 comments:

petka said...

Now, you win! My plant "small heart" still asleep. A frozen daffodils. I'll see who will be saved ...

Donna said...

Wonderful...my bloodroot and hepatica a full month early this year...and I fear some other flowers and buds will be lost with the cold weather coming...I hope it is a cloudy night so the freeze isn't a hard one.

Becky said...

Petka, I might have cheated in the race. This plant is Dicentra cullaria, Dutchman's breeches. Wild bleeding hearts are Dicentra exima and they are no where in sight here either. I think the wild flowers will be tough enough to take the cold. I hope so anyway!

Steve Lau said...

Your tree peony looks awesome.

It looks like it's big enough to be split this fall as it now has plenty of shoots.