Today was 80 degrees, to heck with Spring let’s just jump on into Summer.  Grrrrrrr. Angry face. Now that the snow has melted the ground is dry enough to work in the gardens the weather is getting too warm too fast. The chirpy little weather girl grinning ear to ear telling us all ” No rain in the forecast for days and mid 70’s to low 80’s” is seriously ticking me off. We need Spring people!!! Nice 50-6o degree days with cooler night, lots of rain , so the tulips, daffodils and  minor bulbs can put on their show. Today I had top ut the sprinklers on for gosh sakes  .   Hellebores that were in the last bit of  frozen ground here less than two weeks ago haven’t even opened up yet   , tulips that are  just opening  and quickly fade. Which is all the more reason to get out and cut  . The earliest of my tulips are usually the species t. clusiana , but this year the purissimas beat them. Tulip  fosteriana purissima and t.  fosteriana ‘Flaming purissima  which are also known as  Emperor tulips , are some of the best tulips you can add to your garden because of their willingness to perennialize  , meaning they will reliably come back year after year unlike many of their brethren.

Flaming purissima  has a very cool color story. Some will bloom all red , some very red with cream  streaking, and some cream with reddish streaking. you never know what you are going to get. I added them to the garden a few years back and woke one day in Spring to see about half the bulbs had  been dug up and dragged off   by some critter . ( who left very neat holes by the way). Since then those that were left have come back  without issue, so last year I added some of the  plain cream colored Purissima  or White Emperor . Both are blooming right now in different locations, but it is the Flaming Purissima I used in this weeks arrangement.

I used an old galvanized chicken feeder I lined with a large ziploc bag to hold the water. I walked around and around and around the garden looking for foliage, not a lot has leafed out here yet. I cut twigs off three different spireas, the branches of a pear tree, and then placed around the edge the leaves of the scented citronella geranium I just hacked back  as it gets ready to spend the summer outside. There is also a branch of lindera benzoin in there, for no reason other than I wanted to  cut it.

It feels like every year we climb this very steep mountain in the garden where slowly ,almost one by one, things come into bloom. Then one day out of the blue ,  we crest the hill and go full barreled all out rolling down in an avalanche f flowers that come wave after wave for the rest of the season. I fell like today I was standing on the top of the mountain . Bring it on!