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!

It appears we have a thief in our midst…

For a while now, I’ve been finding random socks in the hallway. Now, I’m not the tidiest person, and yes, I have a tendency to leave my clothes where they fall when I take them off. But that’s the bedroom… not the hallway.

And I’ve also noticed a lot more odd socks coming out of the wash. I have a lot of clothes, so I tend to wait until I have three or four loads to do. And that ususally takes me a couple days, because I have a tendency to forget I’m doing laundry. So the socks get split up a lot. I have a little basket on my dresser to collect the odd ones when I’m putting clothes away. Every month or so, I go through the basket, and match up any pairs. But lately, there have been fewer pairs to match up…

And then, as I was cleaning off the futon to put the new quilt on it, I moved a big pillow the cats like to lay on and…

Eight single socks and a sparkle ball!! It seemed our thief was likely of the feline persuasion…

I told Dave the story I just related to you, and of the recent stash discovery. He told me to go look in the cat cube in the corner of the livingroom…

Another stash! This time with a knitted bear and a (thankfully clean!) pair of cotton underwear. He told me he’s been watching Lemmy take my socks in there for weeks. (Though he was surprised about the underwear.)

I cleaned up all the socks, but left him the bear. I made it ages ago with no real plan for it. I woke up yesterday and it was in the middle of the living room floor. He’s obviously one of those cats that likes to carry things around.

The last quilt I got quilted when I was at Mom’s was the large scrappy star quilt inspired by Pat Sloan’s Little Wishes pattern.

It was one of my Leader-Ender projects and I’m absolutely thrilled with it!

So much scrappy goodness! I love a good polkadot fabric and the fine white on black dots was perfect for the star points of this one.

I didn’t have enough of it left to do the binding, but this nice little star print was a good stand in. Sadly, this one is not going in the shop, as I intended.

I found a popped seam after I’d quilted it and I can’t repair it so that it’s not noticeable. So, it’s now on the futon, replacing an old, worn-out Walmart quilt that used to be there.

Burton, of course, thinks that just fabulous!

One of the other things I quilted at Mom’s when I was there was the little runner for my pine bench. Normally, Mom sews the bindings on for me (and I tack them down when I get home) but for this one, I decided to do it myself, because I wanted to add ties, and I hadn’t decided quite how I was going to do it.

So this weekend I took some time to finally get it finished.

And I am beyond thrilled with it!

This mother hen and her wee chick are just so much fun.

And of course, Burton is thrilled. This is his favourite spot to sit and supervise while I’m in the kitchen. When he isn’t under my feet demanding a bit of whatever I’m cooking, that is.

Most of my weekend was taken up with arbor erection (which you saw yesterday) and quilt completion (which you’ll see tomorrow and Thursday), but I did manage to carve out some time Sunday night to put a few more Xs in my cross-stitch project.

Lemmy REALLY likes to help with cross-stitching. Which is, of course, no help at all. And he certainly knows how to turn on the cute when you scold him.

Despite his dubious assistance, I managed to complete two whole letters before bed time.

Maybe this coming weekend I’ll be able to finish all the wording. But that might be to ambitious. I’ll just take it stitch by stitch.

Last week the weather was absolutely gorgeous! And by the weekend, the temps were positively summer-like (28 Celcius). They say things are supposed to drop down to something more seasonal this week, so instead of prepping my veg bed area, I decided to tackle another project – assembling and siting my rose arbour.

Out on the front lawn, I laid out an old blanket, and set up my big sun umbrella for a shady spot to work under and set to work. The arbour is white vinyl, so it was light enough for me to work on by myself. I took my time, carefully following the instructions and in a couple hours, I had it all together.

Attaching the top to the side really should have been a two-person job (as the instructions stated) but I found a way to manage it on my own. (Dave and I love each other very much – and know better than to try to build things together unless we absolutely have to!)

I took a break for a couple hours after assembly, and waited until the sun had gone behind the house before digging my post holes. Once the holes were dug, I got the arbour situated and level, and filled the holes with some Quik-Crete.

And with that, the project was complete.

Well… it’s almost complete. I just have to wait for my mail order climbing roses to arrive.

I have Eden and Quicksilver coming, and I can’t wait for them to start growing up and over the arbour!

When I got back from Mom’s last Sunday, I came home to a pile of beautiful daffodil blooms.

I probably planted at least 10 different types of daffodils but so far only these two types are blooming. They are both very traditional, and I love them! But then I love all daffodils.

The weather throughout the week was absolutely amazing, and as a result the spring bulbs have practically exploded!

The Grape Hyacinths are just getting started adn as you can see, I have three colours. The traditional blurple, a pale pink (which I’ve had previously), and a new, solid white one! And these will multiply year after year.

In addition to the white hyacinths in the porch boxes, I have others coming up in all the gardens. Most are in the catio. So far, I’ve got this lovely periwinkle blue, a pretty pale pink, and a much bolder pink. The bold pink one has had a bit of a rough time thanks to Lemmy and his constant zoomies. Though the flowers may be broken this year, the bulbs are strong, and hopefully, our ginger mister will be a little calmer next spring.

I showed you some of the Glory of the Snow last week, but at that time it was only the light pink ones. But now I have blurple and white ones coming up too. Like the grape hyacinths, these will multiply year after year. Mom has a stunning show of the blurple ones in her garden.

And last, I was surprised by this Pasque flower mid-week. I had Pasque flowers at the townhouse, but they never bloomed this early – it was usually May before I saw them.

And there’s so much more to come. I just love this time of year!

When I got home from Mom’s last Sunday, I checked in on my seedlings and noticed a wee (or not so wee) problem!

The tender beans and snap peas were starting to outgrow the seed trays!!!! They are under a grow light, but even then, I certainly did not expect that growth just yet!

I transplanted them into a bigger pot, and they are on the sun porch for now. The sunporch windows are still wrapped with thick plastic from the winter, so it’s a bit like a cold frame in there. The cold nights won’t harm them at all.

I re-planted some more tender beans, so I can have a bit of a staggered harvest this summer.

While I was at it, emptied out the squash tray – the old seeds didn’t germinate. I got a new pack and replanted.

The spinach sprouted, but wasn’t doing well, so I scrapped it. In it’s place (and in the empty pea tray), I planted some sulver dollar seeds, and some snap dragon seeds.

And the weather has been so lovely this last week, I took advantage of a warm afternoon and assembled the raised beds I’d ordered (and Dave had painted)

Don’t they look great. I have to move that temporary bed in the middle (which I’m going paint and reuse.

And hopefully as you’re reading this, I’m outside, hauling soil and mulch and getting this whole area ready. Planting season is still several weeks off, but there’s a lot to do before then!

I mentioned yesterday that on the weekend I’d stopped in to see Krista and Wren on my way through to Mom’s.

And in addition to garden inspiration, I also got another gift:

When drew me this fabulous picture of my kitty crew! The young artiste is now six years old, and you can see her skills are quite impeccable!

And in other news… the bed cats appear to be multiplying

The grey one followed me home from Walmart this week and has made himself right at home!

I have two more quilted items to share, but sadly, I haven’t had a chance to finish the binding on them yet so they will have to wait until next week.

When I got home from Mom’s on the weekend, I discovered that my gardens had exploded with colour. And I have daffies and hyacinths popping up all over. I’ll share more of that on the weekend.

But first… on the way to Mom’s I stopped off to have a little visit with former neighbour Krista and Miss Wren. It was a lovely visit and the ladies totally inspired me with the gorgeous spring urn they’d planted before I got there.

The daffodils hadn’t bloomed yet – but just look at those pansies!!! I was so envious!

After the visit, I stopped off at a little nursery on the way to Mom’s to get her some Easter flowers and when I saw they had pansies too, I just had to get some for my porch planters.

I didn’t buy a lot – just three little plants for each planter. And I kept with the pink/white theme I had going with the hyacinths and tulips.

The tulips have become the most vivid shade of pink, and have a lovely white centre. They are just so stunning. The pansies, of course, will last long after the hyacinths and tulips have faded. So when the garden centres open in a month or so, I’ll get some other annuals to go with them for summer.

And while at the garden centre, I spied something I’ve coveted for AGES.

It’s a Hellebore – also known as a Lenten Rose. They are an early blooming perennial and they come in an amazing range of shades from white to almost black. The nursery had three colours, a creamy pink, this middle pink and a dark burgundy. I had a very hard time choosing.

This is the first time I’ve ever actually seen Hellebore for sale in a nursery. I’ve only seen them in mail order catalogues/online (and even those are few and far between here). The lady at the nursery said they have them every year, so I’ll be back next year for more!

They are a mountain/woodland plant (native to Europe), so I’ve planted it beside the holly and in front of the maple. It’s taking the place of my rhododendron, which sadly, did not make it through the winter. This beautiful plant more than makes up for it though!

My garden dreams just keep coming true!