March 2009

It was only yesterday that I was saying to Waita "Haven't seen any Crocus in bloom in our yard as yet" and lo and behold, here's the first one of the season.

Once you spot one and start looking around you quickly spot some more, like this pair of 'Prince Claus' Crocus and of course the Primulas are showing more and more flowers now too.

When I spotted that first Cocus you see above, I saw a small stand of something behind it with blue buds that hadn't opened as yet and I wondered what they were as I didn't think we had any of the small Iris reticulata planted in that part of the bed, but we obviously do.... as you could tell the next day.

Monday morning March 9th was a bit of a rude awakening as you can see. Taken from the patio door, this shows our newly contructed greenhouse in the fresh falling snow, what has changed from what you saw pictures in January is that we have completely done away with the metal tube frame. The plastic connectors used were so flimsy as to be utterly useless: just look at them the wrong way and they break. Seeing as we needed to build a rack for use inside it anyway, we decided to use the rack to support the skin. It'll pop apart again later this spring with just undoing a few screws and that also allows for a more compact storage of the rack as well.

It may be there are plenty of signs of spring's impending arrival, but a picture like this serves as a reminder we have far from escaped winter's clutches. It does provide some unique picture opportunities though, doesn't it?

Honestly, the first day of spring is only 11 days away.... yeah right.

And to think this is what we looked at the day before....