While last weekend gave us summer, the Monday dawned with winter with ice and snow and freezing rain. But by mid-week, Mother Nature had settled into something more spring-like.

Unfazed by all the weather chaos, the daffodils are just doing their thing. I don’t know how many daffodil bulbs I planted last year, but it was a lot!!!

And these are just the first of them… I have many different types to come.

When I planted them, I just mixed all the different bulbs together and planted them completely randomly.

That means some of the smaller ones ended up in less than ideal spots.

These ones are beautiful… but teeny! They need a spot much closer to the front. When they finish blooming I will move them.

There’s this slightly larger, but still small daffy that needs to be moved too.

If I could only have one spring flower in my garden, Daffodils would be my pick. But I don’t want to have to choose, so thankfully I can have lots!!!

The tulips are just getting started

So far it’s just these two different white ones. But there’s lots more coming. Like the daffies, I planted SCORES, and completely randomly. It will be fun seeing what comes up where.

And this year brings a couple newbies too.

This one is called Guinea Hen flower. It’s also known as the Chequered Lily (because of it’s chequered pattern), or Snake-Head Fritillary (because the flower bud is shaped somewhat like a snake head). It’s a very pretty, delicate flower. And I’m amazed any actually got the chance to bloom, because Lemmy has broken at least half of the ones I planted.

They also come in a creamy white. I think Lemmy must have targeted the white ones, because this is the only one in white I have blooming. The rest are all purple.

After they bloom, I’m going to move some of them out of the catio yard and into the other gardens so they have a better chance next year.

Another new one is the Crown Imperial

It’s a big tall plant with a crown of bold-coloured flowers at the top. I have it in orange here by the catio, and yellow in the driveway garden. It’s native to Iran and is definitely an unusual looking plant.

Both of these are part of the lily family, and as I’ve discovered, are also prey to the red asian lily beetle the utterly destroyed my lilies last year. Unfortunately, the most effective method of keeping them at bay is manual removal. So I’ve been checking these and the Guinea Hen flowers daily and picking off and destroying any beetles I find (which has been a lot for so few flowers.

Oh well – it’s a good excuse to be out in the garden!