
Tiglet in the sun.

Kitties in the sun inside….. Cousin enjoying his spot.



And little tiny Clairbel in a new sun spot.
I have been poking around a bit in the garden, cleaning out piles of black walnuts and leaves, but not moving too much of anything because of the very real likelihood of another snowstorm. And yet…. the plants are not waiting. The hyacinth are coming.
There are some amazing leftover Love-In-a-Mist seed pods (Nigella) left over from the fall, in various stages.
And I think these are the yellow primroses coming back –evening primroses. If these are the ones I am thinking, they are: Oenothera macrocarpa. I might be wrong. I have a hard time with my evening primroses because I weed out about half of them every spring accidentally. They don’t quite look like themselves when they are sprouting. I believe these are the yellow ones –but I also have pink ones in this bed: Showy Pink Evening Primroses.
The tulips and irises are not waiting around. They were tucked in under a lot of straw, and since the winter was relatively mild I think they are especially glad to get out.
Several other plants are also showing up.
Minnie found some catnip… so that was exciting.
It has been raining here, luckily not snowing. And it is a soft, nice rain. So lovely. And the garden still has the spring convergence of new growth and old leaves and seed pods. Soon I will clear the leaves and brush out of the beds, but I am holding back because the last frost date here is 15 May (and it is frequently that cold then).
And the hyacinths are also moving.
The chives are moving along.
The lovely shift to spring weather has coincided with the calendar this year. I don’t quite trust this warmth, and I imagine there will be another snow, probably in April. Last year the late frost was 16 May. But, enough of those gloomy thoughts. Here are some photos from a walk near the big river. These were taken on 20 March. So beautiful. A bit windy, which accounts for some of the blowing sand you can see in some of the pictures. I was also trying to show some of the standing stalks with their amazing seed pods still in place. And I finish off with a picture of a cat, because it is always helpful to see a picture of Tiglet. He is lounging in a box of straw in the barn.
Despite having had several lovely days with kitties reveling in the warm weather, it turned snowy again in true South Dakota March fashion. Here is Tiglet being happy in the warmer weather last week.
A friend brought me this lovely, small beauty. I have it in an egg cup (to give a sense of scale here).
It is still not truly spring in south dakota, but the temperatures are tricking all of us.