'Tis the Season

After the Winter That Would Not End (most of which, admittedly, I missed by being in Mexico), the Mid-Ohio Valley moved into a truncated spring in which all sorts of things seemed to be happening at once. I, at least, do not expect the bloom seasons of irises and trilliums to overlap,

but this year, they did, the trilliums not venturing above the snow until early May and the first bearded irises opening a week or so later.  Nor do I remember yellow lady's slipper orchids

blooming at the same time as the year's first antique rugosa, but there they were at the Toledo Botanical Gardens last week

not that this phenomenon is cause for particular complaint.

Of course, when plants do their spring thing, the birds and the bees also become active, like this bumblebee nectaring on a front yard baptisia.

 There is lots of bird activity in the neighborhood, with the red-shouldered hawks nesting again in the old sycamore on the next block.

Messy yards like mine, where oddments of twigs and dried grass are to be found, have proven useful to the robins, which are frequently seen departing with beakfuls of materials for their second nest in the lawn strip kousa dogwood. A pair of cardinals has chosen the red maple next to the kousa, while something small and brown has built a nest high in the walled garden's Norway spruce, a tree I would never plant but which the neighborhood birds have claimed for themselves.

Spring took forever to arrive, but it is definitely here.