Craziness!
Look what I just found today, after the torrential rain washed much of our snow into massive ice-lined puddles of muck:


Phlox kelseyi 'Lemhi Purple'

What a treat for the eye.

Nothing too special, but a cute little viola volunteer nonetheless...cheers!

I have spring fever so bad that I have been out doing spring clean up in the wind-driven on/off mix of hail/rain/sleet. The craziness continues! My customary earliest spring bloomers are still just barely starting to think about thinking about it...but this guy is going for it today

Nice to see something in bloom outdoors!
Nothing but snow and ice here, and after a high snowfall winter, it'll be that way for some time yet.

I love those panzies,so enduring.

We are starting the deadly sog-season--I still have ice and snow and frozen ground in most places and now we will have the freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw thing for a while. Typically this is also our time for heavy, wet snows too, so that we can get our annual precip before the dry season...but who knows?
Looks like almost all of my new rock garden plants are still alive so far but the next two months will tell the drainage story for sure. got my fingers crossed nothin' much else I can do at this point besides hope for survival

oooh--it's official spring now!
Came home from work today to find crocus



This guy is looking rough...but still working on a flower

yahooooooo

That is great looking. Real sun and blooms. Keep sending photos.

Sad sog-season news: one Agave rotted and the other is looking like it is going to follow suit. Dang! I probably should have fish-bowled them for the winter and all this recurrent rain-sleet-hail business.

On the brighter side, a couple of the saxis are blooming
S. oppositifolia 'Theoden'


S. xkellereri 'Suendermannii'


and the crocus don't care

Dirt ...

>>>>>>I probably should have fish-bowled them for the winter

What does that mean ?

Smiles,
Lyn

Yup. What does that mean? :)
Put a cover on top?
I have a couple Agaves in the garden and they still look OK... I guess!
Love that big blooming Saxi... I also sowed some kinds for the first time, no signs of anything going on in the pots, except some really tiny "pin needles" in the S. longifolia pot.
(pin needle = the stage of germinating seed, with the capsule still attached on top

Yes, I'm curious as well.

I'm going to lose some things to our cold winter.

Sorry--I thought about covering them with big glass bowls/vases/jars--something to keep the fall leaves and tree seeds from settling in and around their crowns AND keep moisture off of them, plus direct it out from their zone a bit, while allowing light in. But then I thought I would simply cook and rot them because I would predictably fail to remove their cover to give airflow and mitigate condensation when I would be at work during the warm part of our wacky spring weather ...
They looked to have survived the worst of our winter cold alright, but rotted *after* the thaw-freeze-thaw-freeze cycle with all this excess precip started - i.e. sog-season

A few of us have tried Agave spp. here in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area. With the exception of Manfreda virginiana, none have been successful. Common among us is the fact that even though the crown dies over winter, usually new sprouts from roots emerge in mid summer. Usually these sprouts do not gain enough energy by summer's end to survive another winter. I am not sure what the actual cause of decline is. But I can say that plants look okay until early spring, and long after they thaw. This is Agave parryi, sourced from above Flagstaff, AZ, probably the most cold hardy strain. First pic take April 3, 2013. "Something" seems not quite right, but it is too early to declare fatal damage. Second pic, April 27.

Well, Rick, it may not be as cold here, but I am happy with my Agave.
I got a (received as) Agave neomexicana.
Was looking terrible after a winter in the garden - but still alive - so I potted it and left it on the windowsill, all winter.



I also have a couple smaller ones (forgot the tag, grown from seeds) around the garden and they are alive.
But this was really a mild winter!

second agave--definitely rotten


But for spring bulbs
We've had rain and snow and more rain and thunder snow and rain and now more snow--I ran around with the camera the other day at sunset and this morning before the latest snow.
Here are a of bunch pics of what it used to look like:
Front--Fire-Hydrant Garden
















Semp and sedum corner








And just a couple cuties from the back yard experiment...

Wow lots of cool pics. I was gonna ask how and where you got all those huge boulders, and then I saw the mountains in the background. No way I can get such rocks around here.
No space for them either, so I play with pebbles

Love that white/purple tulip, and you have YELLOW hyacinths? (haven't seen any around here), and the Sempervivums, the white/red dwarf tulips are nice... and many more...