Anemone blanda, a delightful show

     The Anemone blanda show is on right now, and it might be my favorite spring flower.  I especially like it coupled with some of my moss gardens.  It is commonly named windflowers, but I think that refers to one or two other plants--so I just use the Latin name.

Lots of color now

     I had to wait two to three weeks later than last year, but there is finally lots of color around in the garden now. 
     The first two photos are of the very early Tulipa kaufmanianna, or Water Lily Tulips.  They are just about done blooming now, and the regular tulips have yet to open. 
     I have lots of varieties of daffodils, blooming over a long period of time, so I have about five weeks of yellow to enjoy.

A Rotary delight

     In 2012 I built two moss gardens at Rotary Botanical Gardens in Janesville, WI, about 50 miles west of my home.  They have a Japanese garden, and as virtually all gardens in Japan have extensive moss gardens, it made the gardens at Rotary more authentic.
     On this past Monday, I spent six hours doing spring cleanup work there.  Plus, I replaced some mosses where birds and other critters did damage.
     The first three photos show the garden at the south entrance.  Surprisingly, after five years, this garden is doing better than the other one, primarily because it gets no sun, as does the main garden, shown in the last four photos.  The second garden, split in two by a walkway (the last photo shows that garden from the opposite side of the first three), has several Thalictrum dioicum (Early Meadow Rue) planted in it, though it was just emerging on Monday.  It gets about 18 inches by mid-May.
     I fasten the moss on the big limestone rocks with 100% silicone caulk.  In a few months it will send down rhizoids, root-like attachments, which connect it to the rock.  Eventually it will spread over the rock, growing from a half inch to an inch each year.

Finally, something is blooming.

     Yesterday, three weeks later than last year, my first daffodil opened up its beautiful yellow flowers. But it will be another week before the daffodil beds are in full display.
     But the crocus and iris beds handle the cold spring better, as the photos show.

No blooming here, so....

     Normally, lots of tulips and daffodils would be in bloom here, but not this year, as it has been very cool the last month.  So, I got to see lots of blooms by looking at my photos taken in 2012 when I visited the famous Keukenhof Gardens a bit southwest of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.