Spring Garden Flowers in Bloom

It's a soft morning today, all damp with yesterday's rains, with warm spring breezes smelling of hay and pine flowing through my office windows.  I had to take two walks today (oh yes; poor me) because Shadow refused to go out early.  She's afraid of the neighbor's tractor trailer truck, and won't pass it when he's warming it up to go to work. So early this morning, I walked myself up to the mail box to leave some outbound mail for the mail carrier, then took Shadow out an hour later after our neighbor left for work.  She was very happy about that and gave me a big, silly doggy grin in between sniffing all the deer tracks in the mud alongside the driveway.

Last night while driving home from my Master Gardener class, it was pouring rain and windy, and I thought some leaves were blowing over the road. Our country road does not have street lights, and in addition to heavy rain and wind I had to contend with patches of thick fog that popped up mysteriously, as if a blanket was thrown over the windshield of the car.  Well, as the "leaves" moved across the road, I suddenly realized what I was looking at: toads!  Dozens and dozens of big toads hopping around.  I guess the heavy rains had flooded them out of the roadside gutters where they hide among all the fallen leaves.  I tried my best not to squash any but they seemed determined to hop under the wheels of the car....

During my morning walk, I saw bluebirds beginning their hunt for the perfect nesting box.  They act as if a realtor is showing them many properties; try this birdhouse on the fence next to the vegetable garden, sir.  What, not to your liking?  How about the one next to the shed?  And on and on the males flit, stopping to trill their lovely liquid song on top of a fence post, then flying into the next box to scope it out for their mates.  I'm so glad that John remember to clean the boxes this past weekend.  Now they are all clean and waiting for the nesting pairs to find them.

I also took my camera into the garden, and was rewarded by many spring flowers blooming weeks early.  This is what normally blooms in our garden around April 1, not March 1.  Everything is at least a month early.  The pansies are from plants I added to the foundation garden in front of the porch back in 2009...they reseed and love the spots under the azaleas, and so I have color there throughout the season starting with pansies, then moving into the bright neon azalea colors, and finally green azaleas and pansies blooming sporadically in the damp, cool northwest exposure.

All of the vegetable plants and seeds have been ordered.  The seeds have finally germinated thanks to a fresh package of pepper and eggplant seeds I used after the older seeds refused to germinate.   Plenty of tomatoes - four varieties in all - are up, and now the peppers and eggplants join them.   I plan to start more perennial seeds from seeds I gathered over the years this week, too.

Enjoy the pictures, and I hope today brings you warmth, friendship, peace and love.