The First Day of Spring is When?

Not sure what I will do with this many scarlet cardinal flower (red lobelia). My garden is not really suited to this plant, but the seed was sent to me by mistake... I had no idea it would germinate quite this well. Maybe there are a few seedlings in there that will be tolerant of my more desert-like conditions.

I'm not sure where the month of March has gone. I have been under the fog of first a cold of short duration, but then a lingering cough (the cough always seems to linger) for all of March courtesy of my nephews who seem to be petri dishes of contagion.

Spring officially begins Monday Sunday.

Monday? Sunday? (Okay, the whole Leap Day messed me up...)

The garden is still a grey matted mess. I half hope everything will sort of grow through all the clutter and be so vigorous that all the green will just hid all the brown. Is that how that works? Probably not, but I can hope!

Although I have not so much stepped outside in the month of March, I have started oodles of seedlings, and already pricked out many. I have a flat of seedlings from a particularly nice petunia I had last summer. Why is it this seed germinates like crazy and those pelleted seeds costing $.50 a SEED don't?

 I hope these seedlings look something like their parent!

Along with other strange petunia miracles, I am anxiously waiting to see if the petunias by my plum tree self sow again this year. If they do, it will be the third year they will have done so. They begin blooming around mid-June in shade of white through deep lilac. Last year was the first year for color variation. The first year's seedlings were very similar to the shade of the original plants, a deep lilac.

I moved a pot of hens and chicks I had placed into the rock garden, just to make contact with the ground in the hopes they would survive the winter in the (plastic) pot, They did, but today I noticed the daffodils are not quite as happy as I am as I had placed the pot in their space.

I have been looking for this yellow phlomis for a while. I grew the pink, but it always looks dirty and nasty next to the hot pinks blooming at that time in my garden.  I did like the foliage on the pink phlomis, which is a contrast to the strappy grass foliage or itty bitty leaves on so many of the other plants in my border.

As for other perennials, I also started some white coneflower ('White Swan', in case you're interested) and blue flax. White coneflowers are one of those things you have to actively cultivate or they seem to fade away leaving it to their more vigorous pink-toned brothers. I had blue flax years ago although it only blooms until about noon and then closes shop. It is one of those plants easily weeded out in spring or fall, much to my dismay.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be sunny enough for a little activity in the garden; at least enough to prompt me into carting away the black bag filled with debris collected on a sunny day at the end of February! Such a strange winter, I can clean out the side yard in February, yet the garden has hardly changed since then with such a cool March.