Signs of Spring

My girl made street signs for me.
I'm hoping to help decrease wrong deliveries.

We've had a stretch of not-terrible weather - including some actual nice days. At this time of year, a "nice" day is one where it gets up to at least 50 in the sun, there is sun, and little wind. More sun and less wind allows the temperature to sag downwards from 50, as long as I dress for it. 

I've spent a couple of days in the yard, either finishing my fall cleanup or starting the spring cleanup, depending on how self-critical I'm feeling at the moment.  I'm also very focused on house-training Bixby - it's going really well - and we step outside for a few minutes nearly every hour we are home. This time outside allows me to search for and find even the tiniest hints of spring.

It feels like we've had no actual winter  though we did have one short-lived minor snow. These nice days make me long for spring, but it's really too soon.

Daffodil and crocus foliage tips are emerging, as they do every year at this time. My winter-blooming plants have not really come on yet. My witchhazel does have some buds but no blooms. My hellebores were all transplanted last year and I'm seeing some healthy foliage of some of them (and some died) but nothing that looks like the beginning of blooms. My winter jasmine, which hangs over the wall at the corner, has just a few little blooms and may come on stronger soon. 

Daffodil tips by the back entrance

There are several plants with green foliage year round, and these stand out. One gardening tip I heard but didn't act on as well as I would have liked last year is about how to use that to your advantage. Because certain weeds (onion grass, english ivy, vinca) are green when most plants around them are not, you can target them more easily for weeding right now. Because of the mildness of this winter, there are more things green than normal, but the principle still holds. 

This plant, golden groundsel, is NOT supposed
to be blooming yet, but it should be green

I successfully killed a lot of grass in my very back in the fall, and didn't get to planting the new grass. Therefore, there is a big mudpit waiting for me. I'm going to look up about how warm it has to be to plant new grass, and look for a 2-3 day window for taking on the big job.