I think thyme is the herb that is growing most impressively this year. It is flowering some now and I need to cut it again. I love the taste of thyme and really like having it dried but it is not a fun herb to dry. The leaves are so tiny….. And I have a lovely picture of Tiglet.
This is Tiglet in the morning sun.
Vladimir is a very handsome cat. He has managed to retain a great deal of his kittenish charm, but it occurs to me that he is not a young kitten anymore. He was born in August of 2009. He was an adorable kitten.
This is him in Dec 2009.
He is a sweet, silly kitten. Here is a post about him and his bed head, if you want to see more pictures of Vlad.
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.
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.
