Wild anemones

Last Sunday around noon I took my little niece to the nearby woods to take a closer look at the wild anemones. For the past few springs we've been seeing them from either car or bus windows and there were always so many, sparkling in the sun! It's been a joyful sight, the first wild flowers to bloom after the long winter, and in truly astonishing quantities. I've been intrigued by how exactly they grow and what the flowers look like, as well as by whether they appear transplantable from the natural woodland to a garden setting. This year I finally managed to get some answers. We first cycled to a spot near which I had seen the flowers, which is merely two bus stops away from my house, then we dropped our bikes and proceeded to investigate, trying not to crush the delicate plants with our feet.

path we took through the woods next to the power plant offices, anemone patches to the right


birches and wild anemones


standing tall (ca. 5 inches)

Because the wood is a reserve, we couldn't dig to see how deep the roots grow. I still don't know how well they might transplant, or how they spread. But we thoroughly enjoyed the masses of flowers, the gorgeous weather - sunny but cold enough to make us wear gloves, and our ride, which was the first bicycle ride this year for both of us. Today, a week later, all the little white flowers are still blooming.

Young ligularias

I spent the day at the farm yesterday. I had been tempted by the forecast of a cloudy 19 C/66 F but at noon it merely got up to 14 C/57 F with some wind. It felt considerably warmer whenever the sun peeked out, though, which happened quite frequently in the afternoon. I continued to clean the beds next to the house. I managed to get the entire north-eastern bed done, which is an area most frequented for meals or resting outside due to a nice partial shade it gets from the trees and the house during hot summer months. I also transplanted some alchemilla there but didn't take the "after" pictures, so here's what it looked like "before".

The purple leaves are ligularia dentata which seeded itself throughout the bed. The mother plant is the single plant closest to the corner of the cellar window, the rest are seedlings growing wherever the seeds dropped. Isn't that miraculous? Ligularia is such a huge gorgeous plant when the leaves get bigger and then it blooms in the late summer. My sister first saw it when on vacation at the beach and brought it to the farm but she planted it in full sun where the leaves were constantly wilting from the heat. I moved it to northern side of the building (needed a wheelbarrow to carry the rootball) and can you believe how it took off. I didn't count but there are at least a couple of dozen ligularias there now. I'll try to transplant some to another spot, hopefully creating another spectacular ligularia bed.

Behind the ligularia you can see the emerging ferns and lilies of the valley as well as a clematis next to the wall. A small clump of pale green leaves in front of the purple ones is ligularia przewalskii, and the spreading clump of similar looking leaves at the very front is a small blue flowering geranium. A tiny clump of cream-leaved oregano and some August planted iris to the right.

ferns and lily of the valley

The vegetation hasn't advanced very far, as you can see, so I hope to still be able to do some perennial transplanting in May.

Daffodils and periwinkle

The farm in early March

I visited the farm on Monday, almost two weeks ago from today. I was lucky to pick a warm and for the most part even a sunny day. It didn't look like the forecast was going to come true when I was leaving home - the sky was all cloudy and grey - but when I was approaching the farm it cleared to blue and sun came out.

The pics currently in the header and sidebar of my blog - a green neighbor's field and a hazel bush in bloom - were taken on that day. As well as the lime tree, old puff-ball and ferns. The vegetation is only beginning to show. It is always two or three degrees colder out there than it is in the city, so I wasn't expecting to see much green. But I actually found a couple of buds already opening into leaves or swollen and waiting for just a little more sun.

alchemilla mollis (lady's mantle)


tulips


nepeta (catmint)

The news I learned was that there had been a small fire in the neighbor's birch thicket and firemen arrived to extinguish it. Apparently, the branches of one of the trees were touching the power line and caught fire, which then spread a bit. There was no major damage, but as a result later during the week the village administration sent workers to clear the thicket and do an inspection along the power line. The line crosses our property almost midway in the east-west direction. I don't think they climbed over the fence because I didn't notice any branches down within the fenced area. This might be because last fall I cut down a single young maple which used to grow directly underneath the line, and there simply weren't any other trees left interfering with it. The village workers had, however, found a large pine branch, quite high up the tree, growing straight towards the line on the very eastern border of the property. They approached it from behind the fence, and cut it down.

old pine tree trimmed around the power line

Sunset in mid-March

sunset over neighbor's garden, 5:33 p.m.

Today's sunset was not as spectacular as the sunset in mid-February but it happened a full one hour later.

Even though the daytime temperatures are around 4 C/40 F, they go down to below 0 C/30 F during the night. It's been also very windy today, as well as yesterday. So last night I gave in and turned the central heating on, although initially I planned to leave it off for the night. I'll be trying to cut down from the current four to only two or three hours of heating in the evening before I go to bed, although ideally I'd want to switch it off entirely until next fall. I hope I will be able to do so in early April at the latest.

Sure signs of spring

I woke up of my own accord around 9 a.m. (well, actually the phone rang but it was a very quiet ring).

I realized that I had dreamt about a guy in a gray suit jerking off over my naked butt while I was turning my neck to watch him ejaculate.

When I woke up, sun was already high and shining merrily through the blinds in my bedroom.

I got up instead of going back to sleep.

I scrubbed my philodendrons clean and dusted around them and threw away one dead plant.


That's it for this morning - just a hasty recall before I head to work.