peak blue

 Sometime every spring right around the first of April, our garden's "lawn" turns blue.  This is caused by several thousand Scilla siberica bulbs.  It's a pretty remarkable sight.  It just takes a few decades to multiple. You can't walk with out stepping on them.  New neighbors are quite surprised at how blue the "lawn" becomes.

early flowering -Snow Trillium

 It's the first week of March and a few things do flower this early, but not very many native plants.  One of the cutest is the snow Trillium, T. nivale.  Flowering early is  quite usual, and so it pokes up through the leaf litter.  This is also the smallest Trillium at about 3 inches tall and each whorl about as wide. it is easy to overlook, which TTP did for years until an early scouting trip surprised this botanist.  Now it grows in our native plant gardens so its easy to watch for.  This is one plant with 3 aerial shoots, a whorl of three leaves and a flower on each, and it took several years to get this big.  OK this should have been a Friday Fabulous Flower, but I'm a couple of days early.