small stuff

I noticed about six or seven bluebonnet seedlings in one of my beds this week. They are still small enough, and the temps cool enough, to dig them up and move them.

They don't like to be transplanted, but at this early moment it is possible.

Bluebonnets are wild lupines, the muse for Texas landscape painters and the backdrop for Easter pictures of the kids clad in their bonnets and bowties. I enjoyed seeing the olive green leaves, lined on each edge and formed in a star pattern, something I have not seen for many years.

Lots of little larkspur seedlings also clumped. They are even less friendly to transplanting, but I may do that as a way to thin the clumps.

My Winchester Cathedral white English rose has finally started sending out red shoots, the first of the three bare-rooted roses to do so. I fret over the other two, noticing that the limbs are still green and showing the potential to bud.

My bearded irises have burst from their pregnant leaves to send out flower stalks. One big clump is made up of old fashioned blooms, a gaudy mixture of purple, yellow and white. The other is all white, but a repeat bloomer. It will return again in the fall to bloom, about the time our first hard frosts arrive.