Catching Up

I'm a bit behind here.

In the first place, I've let two important anniversaries go by: Timber's 5th birthday and the 2nd anniversary of my blog! So Happy Birthday to my beloved boy, and a heartfelt thank you! to the people who read my blog and make comments, either here or directly to me. I'd probably keep blogging without your comments, as it's a good record for things, but knowing someone's reading makes it a lot more fun.

Friday was a truly beautiful spring day--something we don't seem to get much of in recent years. The sun shone bright all day, and it was warm enough for the scent of the hyacinths to spread across the yard but cool enough that a light sweater was comfortable (esp. when I was in the dog yard, which doesn't get much sun). I had the day off, and unfortunately scheduled a lot of running around in, but I did manage to get the dogs out for 3 hours over the course of the day, and I took a bunch of flower pictures. To me, spring flowers in particular are beautiful in the sun; they seem to hold light in a way that summer flowers don't, though I wasn't successful in capturing that in any of these photos.

I love the buds on these little narcissus--they look like shooting stars. Then they open into these tiny, perfect white star-shaped flowers. Beautiful.

I have a sort of love-hate relationship with vinca. It can be pretty rampageous, but the dark shiny oval leaves are beautiful, esp. in a thick established patch, and the deep blue-violet flowers are beautiful. (and as usual, the blue is impossible to reproduce here--it's several shades darker and at the same time more intense that what you see here)

Look at how the sun illuminates all these plants:

This looks out of focus, but it's really not. It's a trick of the sun, lighting up the fine silvery hairs on the leaf stems, picking out the edges of the leaves, and the contrast of the parts of the leaves that are illuminated and the parts that aren't. It's a lovely little rosy-flame patch at the foot of the tree, and I hope it does well and spreads over the summer.

I just can't get enough of the hyacinths this year! The white ones have been especially lovely. They're such a pure, intense white.

I'm going to keep trying with the tulips. Tulips particularly have a way of holding light like a cup holds water, so that they shine from within. It's breathtaking. I completely missed it here, but I've always liked red tulips with satiny black centers trimmed with gold.

And here, something unexpected and exciting: Lilies! A couple of years ago I planted 6 Casa Blanca oriental lilies (another intensely white, perfumed flower I love). Last year there wasn't a sign of them, so I'm thrilled to see four spears here! I'm hoping that they'll actually bloom.