Two Hours Well Spent

The weather forecast warned of freezing temperatures for last Saturday, which meant the daffodils and camellias would all be ruined overnight. It wasn't worth cutting the camellias since they last only a day in a vase, and since the bushes are still covered with buds that will bloom after the freeze. But the daffodils. I couldn't bear losing all the longlasting daffodils in one overnight freeze.

It didn't look like a big job. How long could it take to cut a few daffodils spread around the yard? So I took a couple of pitchers half-filled with water outside and began cutting. Filled the next two, and the next. Went back for more and filled those, too.  Before it was over, I had thirteen pitchers and jars filled with fresh cut daffodils.

Delivered the six fullest jars to my six nearest neighbors before I thought of taking a photo.

Leftovers after the first six deliveries

Gave three more jars to my yayas and still had four left for my own house.

Love the white petaled ones best

And sure enough, it did freeze that night. 

Frozen sugar water in hummingbird feeder

Now, almost a week later, the daffodils are still bright and beautiful indoors. The nine recipients expressed gracious appreciation for the deliveries, and their pleasure multiplied mine by nine.  Still, I wonder how the freeze will affect the remaining spring blooms, especially the cherries and hydrangeas. dkm

So It's Time

Conk-la-ree! Conk-la-ree! Dtdtdteeeeeeee!  Loud and many.  From the neighbor's tall holly just over the fence. Sounded like red-winged black birds to me—couldn't be—not this early. But yes, on closer inspection, the holly was nearly saturated with blackbirds. So they're already beginning their pass-through on their way to parts further north, soon to be here in huge flocks that cover the ground. Our warm winter has fooled them.

I returned home on Jan 31st, after a month away, to daffodils already in bloom. Earliest I've ever seen them is Valentine's Day, often not till early March.  

daffodils in early Feb, 2012

The winter hellebores have only just bloomed!  Daffodils? Impossible. 

winter helleborus, Feb 8, 2012

helleborus, Feb 8, 2012

I shouldn't have been surprised, because the day I left home, on Jan 2nd, the flowering quince blossoms were just beginning to open—so early I feared they would live to regret it. But they flourished, and I nearly missed them. 

flowering quince, just past peak bloom, Feb 8, 2012

 The camellias that usually show in late Feb &  March are falling all over themselves trying to outbloom each other. 

pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012

pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012

magniflora, Feb 8, 2012

magniflora, Feb 8, 2012

big red, Feb 8, 2012

The cherry buds are swollen and purple, at least four weeks early. I'll be perturbed with Jack Frost if he spoils the backyard cherry blossom show this year.

And just now, as I take my hour of long-sitting in the backyard for the first time since I've been home, who's that I see in hot pursuit of whom? None other than Sir & Madame Bluebird! While I can't be sure it's the same pair I watched through the 2011 nesting season, there can be no mistaking what this pair has in mind today.  Such a teasing and fluttering and darting and chasing and fluffing—in and out of the branches behind the copper roofed bird house. My oh my.

General Beauregard Lee, Georgia's legendary ground hog at Yellow River Game Ranch, who has a 94% accuracy rate, predicted an early spring when he made no shadow on Feb 2, but I don't think even he meant this early.

Wonder what all this says about the kind of summer we're in for, and if the early warming is the certain result of our longterm careless environmental behaviors. dkm