Spring, Scotts Bay Style

I deliberately have avoided reading any other blogs so far today, in part because I've been really busy with work and in part because I didn't want to hear or see too many paeans to spring before I could post my own exultation on the equinox. Let's have a look around Sunflower Hill, shall we, and see what spring has wrought here. We'll start with the conifer and heath/heather bed. What, you can't see the heaths and heathers? Perhaps because they've been buried since December. 

Around front of the house, you see one of the 'glaciers' I've made reference to time and again. These annoyances come when we have a melt, but not enough of one before it freezes again. I could skate on this if I had skates and still could stand upright on them. Fortunately, the ice is only on the grass here, and I could care less about grass. 

Here's part of the back yard, which you've seen from assorted angles over the past few months. Yes, the snow is still very deep in places, courtesy of those drifts formed by the winds off the Bay of Fundy. The funny thing is, I was standing on bare ground when I took this shot, and then walked across the snowbank to another part of the yard. 

Way out at the back of the garden, beside the conifer and heath/heather bed. You can see how we have patchy melts, patchy glaciers, and of course, patchy snowdrifts still. 

Although it's hard to tell from this photo, some of the deepest snow remains here, covering the chocolate garden, most of the purple beech, and a bed that will be awash in daffodils in a month or so. Theoretically, anyway. 

But you can't fool plants, not really. My mother reports her lilac shrubs have buds swelling, as do my magnolias and this metasequoia.

This is the lower garden, where normally my Hamamelis, hellebore, and the bulk of the snowdrops are. They haven't materialized yet through the depths of snow; partly depth from snowfall and partly from hubby plowing. I will observe, however, there's had to be no plowing for at least three weeks. There is hope, of course. 

I know that one of these days I'll be able to oogle and google and grin and sigh over my darling little double galanthus. But just not anytime real soon. 

I can, however, smile and sigh over this fernleaf lavender that I bought today at den Haan's greenhouse in Middleton after finishing a photo assignment a little further afield. It doesn't have the true lavender fragrance, but more of a lemony-musky scent like an artemesia. But it's cheery and fresh in my office, and a promise of the L. angustifolia that will bloom in summer. 


And if the cats' behaviour is any indication, spring crazies are upon them. Especially Mungus, who apparently misses me when I'm gone and feels obliged to attack my feet whenever possible. Given that HIS feet with their extra toes are almost as big as mine...you know when you've been tackled by a Hugh Mungus.