March Madness

Day 63
The Daily DuBrule

Weeping cherry branches on April 18th, 2004

Today when I arrived home I found our white weeping cherry (a.k.a.) our "wedding tree" in full bloom. We call it our wedding tree because it normally blooms on April 18th, the day I married my husband. Huge hunks of this flowering beauty graced the hall, stuffed into buckets and vases everywhere along with forsythia. In fact, I remember stopping by the highway exit on the way to the wedding and cutting a couple of armloads of forsythias from an embankement for even more color on my special day. Today is March 22nd, almost a FULL MONTH earlier than my wedding day 8 years ago.

As usual, if I get home before dark, I grab a glass of red wine and walk my property. The tour tonight was very revealing. All of the buds were completely frozen off of my red quince in late winter after a prolonged warm spell in December caused them to swell. Lo and behold, seemingly overnight, new buds have formed and this radiant beauty is about to burst into full bloom. I have breadseed poppy rosettes of foliage in the beds on the south side of my house, a sight usually reserved for late April or early May. Almost every daffodil I own is either in flower or in swollen bud. Forsythia: in full bloom. March madness indeed.

I picked a bouquet of these double daffies today!

The crazy thing is, some plants that would normally be opening with this chorus of color are barely showing their faces to the sun. Bloodroot. Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin'. A host of others baffled me until I had an "aha moment" tonight. We are in a March drought. It is so darned dry that I think some plants are just stubbornly waiting below ground for the rains to arrive. This is a whole new way of observing the spring emergence of my precious flowers. Some plants seem to pop their heads up due to warm temperatures. Others want moisture. I hope it rains this Sunday/Monday as promised. If so, I will see if my theory holds true. Until then, it's out to the garden I go, every spare moment I have, to plant pansies and prune the rest of my roses and summer blooming shrubs, and cut down the Panicum grasses that somehow escaped my sickle blade last week. 

It's a magnificent month and I refuse to worry and fuss about what it all means or what will happen if or when it gets cold again. For now, I am trying really hard to just take a deep cleansing breath, soak up this unexpected gorgeous weather, and smile a happy smile. Maybe Mother Nature has simply decided to give us a magnificent gift. I'll take it.