Anne McLeod from Birmingham and I were talking this morning about how this spring has progressed. First of all, winter never really came. I still remember the mid-January post of a bearded iris blooming at the farm (must not have hurt, because the ones blooming now are spectacular). Anne pointed out that as March came, things that never had bloomed together did. And then, they bloomed out.
Right now, today, we are at the place where we should be on Mother's Day. Foxgloves and roses are just about in full bloom. Peonies are coming out. I remember that it was a tradition for Berma Abercrombie to furnish peonies for church for Mother's Day out in the rural community where my mother grew up. I dare say, there won't be a peony around (in the Atlanta area) on May 13.
The above scene from Margaret Moseley's garden was photographed on April 17, 2009. You can see that the big snowball, Viburnum macrocephalum, is at its peak. Below it is a pink azalea in full bloom. While I haven't been to Margaret's in a couple of weeks, I can say for sure that this scene looks radically different. Every giant snowball in town is finished, as are almost all the azaleas, even the native ones which used to bloom around mid-April. I even saw an oak leaf hydrangea blooming its heart out yesterday. May 15 to 20 is usually when they come into flower.
You know how it says on ads for buying stocks that previous performance is no guarantee of what will happen in the future? I guess it's the same for spring blooming time. Next year, we could have a long, cold spring, and this scene, which seems about right for most years, will look like this again on April 17. We'll just have to wait and see.
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