Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - February 2011

Welcome to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for February 2011!

Here in my USDA Hardiness Zone 5b garden in central Indiana, we are enjoying several days with temperatures above freezing after days and days of ice and snow and temperatures well below freezing.

These warmer days gave me hope that I would find blooms outside for this bloom day, unlike my first bloom day in February 2007 and again in February 2010 when the garden was snow covered.

So I went outside and began to look in all the usual places. You can picture me leaning over with my hands on my knees to steady myself, peering through the tops of my glasses and through the bottoms of my glasses, and sometimes over my glasses, looking over every inch of the garden before finally spying some little sprouts of crocuses, as seen above.

I also spied these little sprouts from a mixture of bulbs newly planted last fall.

I'll have to check my notes to see what these bulbs might be.

I must have gone outside at least a dozen times on Sunday and again late Monday to see if the witch hazel, Hamamelis vernalis, had started to bloom.

Not yet, but any day now, as the warm up continues, I'm sure this witch hazel, which is rapidly becoming the world's most watched witch hazel, will bloom.

I had hoped to have a few snowdrops blooming mid-month, as I did in February 2009 or a crocus blooming like in February 2008, but with the garden redesign last spring, I think those particular areas might have gotten dug up and the bulbs lost.

Note to self -- plant snowdrops next fall.

While looking for tiny bulbs blooming, I stumbled upon a Viola, with two little blooms on it.

This little viola got moved twice last spring, suffered through the drought and heat of last summer, didn't get weeded out last fall, made it through winter and now has two blooms on it.

Note to self -- plant more violas and let them grow in the garden as long as they want.

And that's what's blooming outside in my garden on this fine February day.

Inside, just like every year at this time, I'm enjoying hyacinths "on vase".

It wouldn't be February without them.

What’s blooming in your garden on this wintry February day?

We would love to have you join in for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and tell us. It’s easy to participate and all are invited! Just post on your blog about what is blooming in your garden on the 15th of the month and leave a comment to tell us what you have waiting for us to see so we can pay you a virtual visit. Then put your name and the url to your post on the Mr. Linky widget below to make it easy to find you.

“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence