We've actually had a few random good weather days in the past week or so, and I've been out in the garden on my hands and knees, weeding and cutting back. I think I pulled the weight of a six-year old child in shot weed/Cardamine hirsuta. It's best to pull this weed as early as possible, because it grows and flowers very quickly, and then produces a seed pod full of hundreds of seeds, that explodes, showering seeds everywhere. While down on my hands and knees, I couldn't help noticing lots of emerging foliage, from the native bulbs and seedlings that I planted last Fall.
Sorry, no picture flowers, but I am so excited by signs of life, that I had to share.
(By the way, yes, I know the little white tags stuck in the ground make the bed look a little silly. But these are all plants completely unfamiliar to me, whose location I really needed to mark. I'm sure once I get more familiar with my new garden, and more knowledgeable about Pacific Northwest plants, I won't need the tags any more. But for now, they stay and look silly.)
So far, there is no sign of flowers on any of my native shrubs, but lots of emerging leaves.
Hope you didn't mind that there were no flowers. There will be plenty later in the Spring, and you can bet I will post more pictures then!
To see more posts about wildflowers, check out clay and limestone, a blog about native gardening in Tennessee.