Winter Foliage

This week, much to my delight, the garden was bursting with early bloomers! I can't say it enough, manning this yard is going to be such a fun learning experience for me. Everyday I'm discovering new facts while observing the plants, reading my pile of gardening books, and researching online.

Here's the same patch of crocuses I showed you in this post:: Did you know that crocuses open their flowers every morning and close them every night?!

The bees love them, can you spot the little guy in this photo, he almost blends in with the background::

We have a few patches of dwarf irises:: There are more varieties than I expected, and I'm still not 100% sure what we have here.

Under the pine trees there are snowdrops::

and Eranthis, or winter aconite:: It was such a fun treat to find these under the trees where I really didn't expect anything to come up! Apparently the Eranthis will self-seed and are most successful if planted in a space that will be left alone so that the new seedlings aren't disturbed. Hands down my favorite fact of the week ~ the Eranthis use thermogenesis to give off a small amount of heat. Warming the ground around them allows them to be one of the earliest blooms in your spring garden!

As the gardening bug has taken hold, I've started to explore the world of gardening blogs. A couple of my favorites are A Way to Garden and You Grow Girl. Of course, I'll add these to the sidebar along with any others I find.