Little by little...

A few days ago, the flowering plum out front burst open!  All weekend-long there were bees everywhere doing their pollinating-best.  Gertie, of course, was doing her best to eat them.  Luckily, she was unsuccessful.

The forsythia are open too:

They're actually on their way out, I think.

There's a cherry in the patio area that's really thinking of joining them, but it hasn't happened yet - I'm guessing that the next warm day after all this rain, we'll get cherry blossoms too.

I'm looking for a good hummingbird feeder and some solar lanterns to hang from it - I'm feeling festive right now.  Spring!

In veggie news:

 It's seedling city.  I have 8 sprouted tomatoes, a bunch of onions and my full complement of brussels sprouts.  I have seen neither sprout or stem of the eggplant...and I just put the squash and the cukes in, so it'll be a week or so before they poke their heads out.

This is my flower  (etc) row - a peony (it's a pretty recent addition, so it's not sprouted too high yet), the mint which is not out at all, recently seeded morning glories, some new little poppy-lings, a bushy little lavender, a dormant rose bush, the other peony, and some container-ed salad greens.

I'm really excited about the poppies- they didn't come in last year.

They're obviously all too close together, but when they're bigger and can take it, I'm going to transplant some of them out into the garden.

This is the larger of the two peonies:

I'm really looking forward to being able to cut these and put them all over the house.  They're my favorite favorites and the double-white is super classy looking.  These are festiva maxima (they apparently have a bit of a fuschia tip on some of the center petals).

Next up, spinaches:

Left one is container spinach, right one is ground growing.  You can see the plum flower petals on the ground there.

The container chard is just thinking about putting up true leaves and there are a few tiny in-ground sproutlings, but not as impressive as the spinach yet.

I've never grown head lettuce, but it's really starting to look like lettuce- I think it's really cute!

The garlic I transplanted is feeling cheerful:

I also put some impulse-bought brocolli in, I've never had luck with it from seed:

I also have beets and carrots coming up:

The carrot seeds were from a few years ago, so I put a lot in just to make sure...I'm clearly going to have to think the heck out of them.

This is the overall shot right now...obviously it's more dirt than plants..and the soil really needs to be ammended, I'm starting, but it's going to be a long process.  After this rain, I'm hoping to get a bunch of maure turned in...it's just a lot easier when the ground is wet.  I may also make the starbucks rounds for a new set of grounds.

Oh - and of course, the rain has brought a bunch of new sprouts out - the strawberry popped up today.  I'm hoping for some preliminary morning glory action - there are some volunteers from pervious years grown in the chink between the fence and the sidewalk that Rita (the landlady) says come back every year, but they're dwindling.  I've seeded a bunch into pots here and there and will probably be less picky about getting all the seed off the plant so that she can have some fresh blood for her fence.