Pansies

Yesterday afternoon I noticed that some very brave pansies made it through our long, snowy winter and have started to bloom! Pansies are my mom's favorite flowers and whenever I see them I think of her so it was nice timing for them to make an appearance since it's Mother's Day weekend.

Today we spent a few hours doing some spring cleanup in the yard. The kids helped me pull weeds and I cleared some of the dead stuff away. Scott even fired up the lawnmower. There is a LOT of bunch grass in our flower beds and it's a real workout to clear that junk. While pulling I found even more pansies coming back... hooray! It looks like even though the tulips and daffodils put up some nice foliage that they aren't going to bloom well; there are only a few buds and they are very small, it was just too cold I guess! There are a lot of other perennials coming back from last year, including monarda, poppy and goblin flowers. Spirea is starting to bud, lilacs are growing like crazy, and the rhododendron looks good. Not doing so well is an azalea and there's no sign of the lupines coming back. Oh well!

My excuse for not finishing? It started snowing. We scurried to put things away and hustled inside to get warm. It didn't last long, but by then I had washed "outside" off and changed clothes... so there is work to do some other day. I can hardly wait to get some annuals planted, and get some more color in our flower beds!