Things are a little out of whack this spring....

          Unless you live under a rock, you are well aware that we are had a very mild winter which is now leading into a very unseasonably warm spring. I've been watching how things are emerging since the end of February. My Witch Hazel which usually is the harbinger of the RI Flower Show week, bloomed a whole month early in January. It also held it's flowers an insanely long time...the petals just dropped last week. The perennials in my gardens started to make their appearance from the soil at the end of February. That is unusual. This week, my gardens look like what they normally would look in about a month from now in the middle of April.

          My spring bulbs are on schedule which surprised me. I figured they would have made an early show this season especially since the ground never froze this year. Old favorites like the crocus are up now (which matches up to when I posted photos of them last year) and they are just now starting to fade. The white crocus are hanging out better than the blues in this nutty 70 something degree weather.

I planted some new things this past fall like these awesome little snowdrops. I love them! I actually think they are a little behind schedule and they should have shown up earlier in March. Go figure....

More Crocus by Lake Larson...you can see the white variety coming up. This photo was taken last week.

This is a new bulb to me...I can't remember exactly what it is. It's definitely in the Hyacinthaceae family. It very well could be a type of Hyacinthoides. I just scoured my Facebook fan page and personal page without success to see if I posted about planting them. I'll see if I saved the label from the bulbs packaging in my office because my curiosity is getting the best of me.

Now this is where I get concerned about what I see...my hydrangeas breaking their buds with gusto. These guys are insanely early. This winter with it's mild temps are setting us up for a hydrangea season for the books because there was very little winter damage on them. The majority of the Big Leaved Hydrangea bloom from buds on last year's wood. So, if we get temps that are below freezing at night for an extended period of time...these blown out buds could get fried. There goes our awesome Hydrangea season. :( If you have Endless Summer or any of their other cultivars, you'll be okay because they bloom on this year's and last year's wood. I only have one of those...my others are the more classic hydrangea. So, I'm wringing my hands over them until we get to our past frost date. I've also seen my clematis and Sargent's Crab Apple being over zealous about pushing new spring growth. I'm not liking seeing all of that either...

I was out and about yesterday and saw something I have never seen before in all of the years I've been involved with plants professionally. Flowering Plums blooming in March...before the Forsythia. I took this pic in Tiverton, RI at a client's condo complex. This is not right...not right at all! I also find it interesting the Forsythia and Korean Rhododendrons who are supposed to be blooming now are holding to their schedule. I've seen some Forsythia that are just starting to show some color. I'm baffled by why somethings are pushing blooms/growth on some crazy schedule and things that you would think would be blooming early because they usually do aren't.

Here's some news you may be aware of if you are a Facebook friend of mine. The office has a new customer service intern. :) His name is Ocean....he's Lars' cousin and their mothers are littermates. He's been here since the end of January and he was a total surprise to us. Lars' breeder was looking for a working home who could take on another boy and she had more girl homes lined up than boys. So to Rhode Island, Ocean came. A lot of people have asked how did he get his name. This was the O litter and Ocean was the blue puppy. The unofficial tradition with Deerwoods pups is the call name and registered name should start with the litter letter. (That actually makes it really easy to know who is out of who and who are litter mates.) So his breeder and family had nicknamed him Ocean and we had decided to keep it. First couple of weeks were a little bumpy with Lars and Ocean figuring each other out. Ocean is already "a lot of dog" in a little body and he's a very different puppy than Lars was. "Strong Willed" and "Pushy" are the words that gets thrown around a lot when talking about Ocean. At first, I wasn't sure if I had made the right decision to let him come and live with us...and that went on for a couple of weeks. But, now that he has settled in and we're more used to him...I'm looking at it as he was sent here to teach me something. I've even said to Eric "I wonder why he's here..." I wasn't looking for him at all and he found us instead. I just finished listening to a book about dogs and one of the sentences that stuck with me was "We don't find the dog we're looking for. The dogs we need find us." I think that is very true...I'm eager to see why Ocean found me.

Without further ado...the Larson Boys at Second Beach in Middletown, RI last week -