Mother Nature hasn’t been playing very nice with us. While we haven’t had any more snow, it hasn’t been very warm. And the skies have been mostly grey.

That means the crocuses have mostly remained tightly closed, awaiting warmer days when the bees are flying. But that doesn’t mean nothing else is happening in the garden.

The Hellebores are continuing to do their thing.

Some Glory of the Snow getting ready to show off all it’s glory.

There’s even some daffodils pushing up buds. The full beauty of spring is only moments away!

The lilacs are putting on buds.

And the peonies are starting to push through!

The sky may be grey, but the ground is getting real green.

To celebrate, I pulled all the pine and willow cuttings from the front boxes and gave them a dose of spring.

Giant Tiger had a whole load of potted spring bulbs. Usually the stores just have daffodils, tulips and hyacinths. But this time found giant crocuses and iris reticulata – a small, early spring blooming iris. They will handle the early cold much better than the other bulbs which naturally bloom a little later.

The two plants are a little tricky to tell apart when not blooming, but I think they are going to look fabulous together when those flowers pop! And of course, once these blooms are done, and I change the boxes over for summer, these bulbs will go in the other gardens!

Unfortunately, because of my head cold, I didn’t et around to starting more seeds until yesterday.

This time around, instead of bubble wrap for the snails, I decided to go a roll of shipping foam. Not only do you get more in a roll, it’s much easier to cut to size than the bubble wrap

You can use almost any material for the snail foundation, but I think I going to stick with the foam. It’s stiff enough to provide support but also rolls well.

It also has the added benefit of showing my tape “labels” better than the bubble wrap. To hold my snails, I picked up some foil roasting pans from the dolllar store

They are the perfect size and shape for holding 12 snails and keeping them upright. They are also great for keeping the snails hydrated. I can add about 1/2″ of water to the pans every other day or so and the snails suck it right up.

This pan is mostly zinnias. When I went through my seeds, I was amazed to discover I had barely any zinnia seeds. So of course, I went out and bought ALL the zinnia seeds! Other than Zinnias, there’s more cosmos (of course), but also some silver dollars, delphiniums and hollyhocks. I’ll start most of my veggie seeds direct, but I did start some tomatoes (yellow pear like last year) and strawberries.

Once the snails were assembled, I topped them with a saranwrap blanket (to keep the moisture in – at least until they sprout) and the put them under some grow lights. I have them sitting on top of a second roaster so they are closer to the light and don’t get too leggy.

So far, the system is working good… just check out the previous snails….

Look at all that growth!

I’m especially excited about these guys. Blue Picotee Morning Glories. I’ve tried to grow them twice before with no luck! But it looks like third time (and seed snails!) is a charm!

Spring, of course, has brought the robins

On the warmer days, there’s almost always a couple of them out there looking for worms and bugs.

This time of year, the Starlings are busy making babies, so they are extra vocal. I personally love all the different chirps and noises they make.

There are also lots of them! At any one time, there’s usually at least 10 or more hanging out and about around the yard.

The house sparrows are also busy with the baby-making. Or at least getting ready for baby-making. This little guy spent a good long while pulling up dead grass for a nest.

And of course, the Jays are never very far away. They’ve always got one eye on the peanut levels at Squirrelingtons.

If I’m excited by a little warmth and sunshine, you should see how this guy feels.

It’s certainly something to dance about! (In truth… he was chasing a fly)

As soon as I had the Easter socks off the needles, I was casting on for a new pair.

And as you can see… they are FLYING! I’m already through the gusset of the first sock.

That’s for a couple of reasons:

The first is… Stripes! They always go fast. And these, as you can see, are skinny stripes. I feel like skinny stripes always go that much faster.

The second is – it’s Kroy. Many of you know, Kroy seems to be a little heavier than a fingering weight – not quite a sport… but close. I’ve always found it a little uncomfortable to knit on a 2.5mm needle. It’s just a little too snug. So, I decided to treat is as a sport weight. I went up to a 2.75 mm, and down to 56 stitches. And it’s working great. It also means it’s knitting up just that much faster.

This is, of course, the yarn Dave just bought me on our Valentine’s Day excursion. Usually yarns marinate in the stash a little longer than this… but this yarn never actually made it upstairs.

I left it on my table, so it was ready and waiting when I finished the Easter Socks.

This is another pair for me. I am being a bit selfish with my sock knitting lately, but I’ve been putting holes in pairs left and right, so I need to replenish!

My plan was to spend almost all of Saturday in the studio, banging out the rest of those arrows. But… On Friday’s shopping excursion, we forgot to get sugar-free candy for Dave. He was all out. It was a catastophe!

So I had to get moving bright and early on Saturday and go replenish his stock. (I grabbed myself some chocolate chip muffins so the excursion wasn’t all just for him). That meant I didn’t make it in the studio until the afternoon,

I made good use of the time I was in there though…

With 24 more arrows made! And as you can see, it was Rupert who is doing the Vanna White duties. That’s because while it wasn’t warm, it was sunny, so Burton and Lemmy were frolicking in the catio. And also because Rupert has been becoming more and more social in his old age.

I’m not sure what’s up with that, but he’s a pretty good sewing companion, so I won’t complain! And maybe next weekend he and I will be able to actually finish the rest of those arrows!

It was all hands on deck for stitching this weekend.

Saturday I had help from the dynamic duo of Furby and Rupert. (Rupert seems to be trying to make friends with Furby and I think Furby is letting it happen.

And Burton took over duties on the second night. Lemmy did drop in now and again but never settled long enough for a picture.

But the end result…

We are almost half way through the VERY LAST section (I can’t stress that part enough. If all goes well, I’l lbe finishing this up this coming weekend. That is if I kick this BRUTAL head cold I seem to have picked up. It’s kicking my butt right now so not much is getting done after work each day.

But before I leave you… did you notice…

That Jack-o-lantern has legs!

Well, it will come as no surprise to anyone, after blessing us with a nice warm weekend at the start of the month, Mother Nature whammied us!

Thursday morning I woke up to this:

Happily, it didn’t amount to much more than that. And by the afternoon it was raining. It was a very COLD rain, but at least it wasn’t snow.

In between precipitations, I went to check on the gardens..

We have crocuses! They are, of course, closed because of the cold temperatures, but they have popped up none-the-less.

These purple ones are my Whale Shark crocuses. They are as big as you can get in a crocus. They have that lovely pale purple outer petal, and darker inner petal – which you can’t see when they are closed up. But trust me, they are stunning.

The Snow Drops were all closed up too – but of course, the snow doesn’t really bother them at all. I’ve got them popping up all over the place now. This particular patch is big enough to divide this year, so my snow drop collection will continue to grow!

The pale Hellebores weren’t bothered either – and the pinkish ones should open any day now. I definitely want more and more hellebores. They can be quite expensive (usually around $30 a plant) so its a collection that’s going to grow slowly.

The pink pussywillows are looking quite fine. Once the weather warms, they will be covered in pollen and swarming with bees. I can’t wait!

Spring is springing!

I could wait no longer.

Last Sunday, I grabbed the seed book, some bubble wrap, some soil and some tape… and I got to work!

12 beautiful seed snails got rolled and stood up in an old baking tray I thrifted (this makes it easy to keep them watered). In those snails are mostly annuals – Cosmos, Sunflowers, Zinnias and the like. They will bring a riot of colour later in the fall/summer, but this is where they get their start.

So the above pic was taken on Sunday the 8th, immediately after cleaning up all my mess. And the below pic was taken yesterday afternoon.

Holy Instant Growth Batman! I can honestly say, I did not expect this level of germination this fast! Of the 12 rolls, 11 already have sprouts. The only one that doesn’t is a native perennial – and it make take a little more time because of that (all of these are annuals – they die every year so their seeds have to work extra hard for the survival of the species.)

I think its going to be seed snails from here on out for this girl! In fact, as you’re reading this, I’m probably rolling up some more! I got some more supplies on Friday, and I have no shortage of seeds to plant!

I didn’t make it into the studio last weekend… but the weekend before we hit a little milestone!

All our four patches were used up and turned into eight patches! Now we get to take all those eight patches and make 16-patches! Once they are all together, we can lay them out on the design bed and get real idea of how many we have – and how many more we’ll need to make!