Color

While I was washing the dishes last night, I was watching two male cardinals having some sort of territorial squabble in the neighbor's backyard. It was startling to see those bright flashes of red, when everything else is still blah brown. And it reminded me, pretty soon my garden will have actual flowers in it! Colored flowers! All different colors! Gosh, I can't wait.

That's one of the problems with winter. Everything is so blah and muted. Of course, the sky can be a brilliant blue in winter; unfortunately, that usually happens on the days when it's zero degrees out.

My day lilies are poking out of the ground, along with the daffodils, hyacinths, bleeding heart, etc. The lilac has lots of buds, as well as the rhododendron. I'm hoping the hydrangeas do well this year, 'cause they're my absolute favorites. Oh, and the honeysuckle. Two of the azaleas look good, and I'm really pulling for the third one, 'cause it tries so hard.

I'll put out the hummingbird feeder this weekend. The earliest I've ever seen one (a hummingbird, not a feeder) is the third week in April, but I put the feeder up early just in case some are passing through. I put up the finch feeder last weekend, and moved the suet feeder to a tree downstairs. I've found that I can't put out any bird food that the squirrels have any interest in whatsoever, because they'll clean out a bird feeder in about 20 minutes, no problem. Ya gotta hand it to the little bastards, they can figure out any "squirrel-proof" feeder ever made within a day or two.

It looks up something may have dug up my little peony bush over the winter. If so, I'll have to get another one, 'cause I'm just determined to have a peony bush. The Rose of Sharons (Roses of Sharon?) that I put in last summer are looking good (i.e., still there). And I can't wait to see if the hollyhocks self-seeded. If not, I saved some seeds, and I'll start them again. I don't know if I'm going to monkey with the gladioli this year; I planted a crapload last year, and only got a few blossoms. Oh well.

So that's the garden update. Pretty soon I'll be down in the garden, farting around, wanting to plant some annuals, although I know darn well that it's not safe (frost-wise) to put in annuals around here until after Memorial Day. Which makes for a short season! Time to move south.