27 February 2017

Floral Report

It's February.  It's cold.  We had tiny snow pellets yesterday and an unkind wind today.  The pellets were called 'graupel', a German word, by the local weather people.  I looked that up online and it wasn't the actual atmospheric phenomenon that I experienced.  Suffice it to say, it has been cold, icy, and gray.  However, the days are getting longer (and marginally warmer) and the plants have their own timetable.

So, on with the Floral Report!

A couple of weeks ago I began seeing the signs.  Tiny piles of earth, pushed up, into the air.  Soil breaking, and pale tips emerging. Stirring.  Life is stirring, under the protective leaf cover.  Plant life, earthworms... stirring.

And then I smelled it.  The fragrant, sweet, seductive aroma of the sweetbox shrub.  The early bloomer, with such subtle flowers, that blasts glorious spring-promising perfume through the neighborhood.  Glory!  Spring Shall Rise Again!

Immediately following the glorious perfume of early spring, here come the snow drops. So clean and pristine looking.  Demure.  But, they are sharing the stage with the earliest of the crocus.  Purple, yellow, white, with dark green spiky-looking leaves, they are planted in drifts in yards in my neighborhood.  I'm usually seeing them closed up as I walk home, as they are diurnal and go to bed early.



In my yard, the daffodils are poking up, and the tulips.  Just barely, but they are gaining by the day.  There is also a lot more garlic than I was expecting in the front bed!  Maybe I'll get some big ones this time.  :-)

Spring in Portland is wonderful.  If you are cold and snow-bound (or just cold), I wish you warm temps; if you have been deluged with rain after years of drought, I wish you high water tables and low erosion; if you are yearning for Spring... I wish you could be here.  It would please your soul, I'm certain.

We are at the beginning of the season.  I'll try to keep you posted!

6 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Crocuses are my favourite spring flowers. When I was a kid, they used to grow wild where I grew up, if you knew the secret places to look.

e said...

The secret places are always the best!

35jupe said...

The desert is starting to bloom. I pulled over in Palm Springs today to take some pictures of flowers that are all of a sudden here. And the Joshua Trees are blooming, not all of them, not even most, but enough that you spot them and are enthralled. (They don't bloom every year, they need wet weather to be willing.) It's lovely.

Secret Agent Woman said...

I've got a fair amount starting to bloom - nothing fragrant that I've noticed, though. But soon.

Middle Girl said...

Contrary to our regional history we had 0 inches of snow during all of January and Februry. Some kind of record, I've read. It snowed (just a bit) on March 1st and will get colder than it has been in quite a while. For a bit. Per the forecast 50s and 60s will return by the weekend.

Tulips are popping through in some yards.

No, that is not me tapping my foot. :-)

8thday said...

Show off : )