Tulips and other spring flowers

Dad is gone, but his tulips are still with us. He loved tulips and planted them at the base of a couple of the big oaks when he first moved here. I was not a big fan. They are pretty for only a short time, and then they look all ragged and worn-out until you go out and dead-head them. I learned the hard way that you have to watch for bees inside before you grab the spent blossom to snap it off. The foliage that is left behind isn’t much to look at either, but you have to leave it to store energy in the bulb for next year.

Dad's tulips

I like the tulips more this year. They seem to have really bloomed their hearts out. I sat down and had a little chat with them. They listened patiently. It seems so long ago when my dad could bend well enough to put a bulb in the ground. In more recent times, he had his flowers in raised beds on the deck. We're going to put strawberries in the beds this year.

The wild ginger by the tractor shed is doing spectacularly well. Not like the ginger I planted near the creek that Terry weed-whacked because he can’t tell a perfectly gorgeous cluster of wild ginger from common weeds. It has never been the same. But I’m not bitter, that’s the important thing. I have so much ginger by the tractor shed that I can just move some down to the creek. I’ll have to remember to do that in the fall.

Ginger flowers under the leaves

The magenta shooting star is blooming by the fifth oak. The white (or perhaps pale pink) shooting stars lag behind, buds unopened.

The first shooting stars

The trillium that I dug up at Camp Pokonokah Hills before it was sold to the State of Wisconsin is blooming cheerfully. It is starting to spread, which makes me happy. It was just getting established at our former home when I dug it up to move here. It seems to finally be settling in.

White trillium

Back by the creek, the second Jack-in-the-pulpit is up, and both are blooming.

Jack-in-the-pulpit

There are many violets everywhere. Best news is that we seem to be making some progress against the garlic mustard.

Violets

Terry found a nest of 5 jelly-bean sized eggs when he was weed whacking around the deer fences. I hoped it was not from some exotic rare species. I strongly suspect that the disturbance and consequent lack of cover would cause the female to abandon the nest. From a cursory Google search, they look a lot like house sparrow eggs. That would be no loss, as that species is non-native and invasive. I question my identification because the sources I read did not say that they typically nest on the ground. In any case, they picked a poor location for their nest.

Putative house sparrow nest with 5 eggs