Springtime Excitement!

I'm always encouraged when I see signs of spring.....especially this year after a particularly long and harsh winter.  The robins have been here for awhile now, and I find them to be an early sign of spring.  The red-winged blackbirds have been back for a couple of weeks now, which makes me know that better weather will be here soon.  But the sure-fire signs of spring are what I find coming up in the garden.  And here's what I've found this week:

Flat-leaf parsley

Salad burnet

My flat-leaf parsley and salad burnet actually survived the winter.  I do believe that I could have gotten fresh green leaves off of them all winter, if I could have chiseled away the 3 inches of ice that covered them in mid- February.  Once the ice melted, there they were, looking green and beautiful!  I planted them late in the summer last year when we were in our drought period.  I'm surprised that they survived at all.

Chives poking up.



 The chives pictured were actually planted in a pot on my porch.  Chives are usually early risers, I usually see them popping up in early February.  This year they seemed a little late.  I did not see them pop up until the very end of February when we had a couple of warm, sunshiney days.

St. John's Wort

My St. John's Wort that I planed early last summer looks like it is going strong.  It actually looks as if it was probably green all winter as well.  It's at the southwest corner of the front porch and I would think that it would be subject to a lot of cold wind through the winter.  So I'm quite happy that it is doing so well.  I hope to harvest the blooms this summer and make some St. John's Wort oil.  (I'll post that later this year!)

Little garlic plants coming up.

And I'm happy to report that our patches of garlic that we planted last October (see earlier post) is up and doing well. 
I LOVE this time of year!!!  It's so exciting to watch our 'babies' emerging from their long winter's sleep.  I am eager to get going on lots of things. And another pleasant surprise that greeted me today........a wonderful Eastern Bluebird perching on a branch outside of my window.  I had never seen one in my yard before!  Life is good!