Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - February 2015

Welcome to Garden Bloggers's Bloom Day for February 2015.

If you have been posting faithfully for bloom day since the beginning, you are now starting your ninth year of bloom day posts.

Yes, that's right. If you've been playing along since the first post back in February 2007, you really do now have eight years of an online journal of blooms in your garden.  And you probably claimed you could never keep up a garden journal, didn't you?  Ha, you were wrong!

I tip my trowel to the many who have been so faithful and I welcome all those who have joined along the way.  Thank you for being a part of bloom day.

Here in my own USDA Hardiness Zone 6b garden, we had a brief warm up last weekend, but this weekend the cold has returned and  the wind is blowing. It seems almost foolish to be out in the garden looking for blooms.

I went outside anyway because sometimes it's nice to appear a little foolish.  For my efforts I was rewarded with just a tiny glimpse of the soon to open blooms of the witch hazel, Hamamelis vernalis.

They are almost ready to bloom but may take their time in all this cold.

When the witch hazel finally does bloom, it won't be the first bloom of the year in my garden.

I spotted the first snowdrop, Galantus sp., blooming way back on January 24th.

There are two other snowdrops now blooming to join that first bloom.

I feel a bit foolish showing just one snowdrop bloom, after looking at pictures of the swaths of snowdrops blooming in British gardens.  I am making a note now to order more snowdrops this spring for fall delivery, before the bulb companies are all sold out. I want my own mini swath of snowdrops.

Elsewhere in the garden, skeletons and shadows of last year's blooms are all around in disarray. I hope the next nice day is one when I'll have the time to cut them back.

Inside, the begonia I purchased last fall is blooming.

The begonia blooms are pretty but don't have the scent of the hyacinths and lily of the valley which I forced into bloom earlier this winter. I'm not including them in this bloom day post because they are past their prime and not picture worthy right now.

Perhaps in a few weeks I'll have some crocuses blooming indoors?

These little crocus sprouts are part of a grand experiment I started a few weeks ago.  I had some crocus corms chilling in the refrigerator and I was too lazy to pot them up properly, so I planted them around the bases of some of the amaryllis bulbs.  They've all sprouted, but will they bloom?

Only time will tell.

And that's what mid February is like here at May Dreams Gardens. How are your gardens doing in February? Join in for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day and tell us all about your blooms or attempts to have some flowers in the middle of winter.

It's easy to participate.  Post on your blog about your blooms on the 15th of every month, then come back here and leave a comment to tell us what you've got blooming and put a link on the Mr. Linky widget so we can find you.

In the words of Elizabeth Lawrence, "We can have flowers nearly every month of the year".