Happy vernal equinox - Is it really spring?

Our seasonal weather has never been very well coordinated with our calendar, and since this is the earliest equinox ever (?) the weather remains a bit coolish.  In general spring is considered to have started after our "lawn" reaches peak blue, the result of thousands of Scilla bulbs all in full bloom. Peak blue is still a few days off; last year peak blue did not happen until April 5th according to the flowering log for our gardens.  Peak blue actually got snowed on last year, and that slowed things down a little bit although it had no other impact on these early bulbs other than that.  You won't see blue lawns like ours out in the burbs, it takes decades for them to proliferate so much.  Most of the smaller crocus varieties are in flower and they tend to move around a bit also.  It's always funny where new flowers appear.  Although the pandemic is keeping more people at home, it isn't house arrest and yesterday TPP started garden clean up by raking up leaves that could have ended up in the lily pond.  TPP also thinks that a few more tree peonies are needed in the Japanese garden, but it's hard to find different varieties for sale especially as the Itoh hybrids have become so much more popular.  Here's a plug for Peony's Envy gardens, a very nice online nursery, the plants always arrive looking bigger and better than expected.  They do carry Paeonia japonica, a smallish woodland species that seems to grow sort of like a Trillium. This species is a bit hard to find and slow to grow, but really nice when established.  Ah, well, TPP may get some time to do a bit more online shopping.  Wild ramps are popping up in one area which was much expected, but then quite a patch is developing all the way across the woodland back, the wildest part of our gardens.