Spring and a first hummingbird!

It was a lovely day spent gardening. Today is Easter for Christians, and even though we're not religious, as a secular holiday, it has symbolism as a time of rebirth.

Spring is here. A newly mown 'lawn', borders and meadow edited of winter annuals, a flourishing vegetable patch, and all's right in the garden.


And now, about to have our dinner with greens and lettuces freshly harvested, looking out my study window, our first ruby-throated hummingbird of the season visited a few of the Carolina Jessamine flowers on the trellis out the window. Hooray!

Spring in the Southeastern U.S.

March brings spring to those of us in the Southeastern U.S. The hints come in winter, with the lovely flowering imports from Asia, Turkey, Greece, and elsewhere. Crocus, snowdrops, daffodils, and spring snowflakes are among the bulbs; ornamental apricots flower in January and camellias flower from fall through winter, depending on the species and cultivar.

In good years, Magnolia stellata (Star magnolia) and Magnolia x soulangiana (Saucer magnolia) avoid the late freezes and put on a show. This year is one of those. I don't have a single picture that I've taken of Saucer magnolia (it's pretty enough, but otherwise not all that interesting from a wildlife gardening point of view, and 4 out of 5 years, the flowers get zapped by frost). So here's a photo downloaded years ago from Clipart.com, now Jupiter Images, I think.


But real spring means our ephemeral spring wildflowers: Trilliums, bloodroot, mayapple, Tiarella, Shortia (Oconee Bell), Wild Ginger, and a host of others. And now, the hardwoods are expanding their buds, from the hickories and oaks, to the flowers of sassafras and dogwood, and the really early flowering trees like red maple and winged elm are developing fruits.

A colleague took this lovely photo of Trillium cuneatum at the Garden. It's a remarkably large rosette that has apparently persisted through habitat alteration and path construction, as we just noticed it after a new path was built a couple of years ago.

Hepatica americana

Hepatica americana

We saw the first Hepatica in flower this morning. It was expected; it's one of the first of our native woodland wildflowers to flower. We'd actually made a detour on our walk to see if flowers were open in a spot we knew and we weren't disappointed.

I checked for a post about seeing Hepatica last year (it was on February 29) -- I couldn't remember if I'd made one, but of course, I had. This is an image that my gardening companion took last year.

Hepatica flowers open in late morning and close at night. I love retelling the story about the entire lab group in Germany (where I studied after graduate school) making the trek to see the first Hepatica nobilis flowering in the snow.

A beloved symbol of spring in Northern Europe, I'm also reminded of the graceful Hepatica logo for an International Botanical Congress in Berlin years ago.

A spring afternoon

With water and warmth, leaves are expanding rapidly and flowers are opening.

All of the potato sprouts are up, the coral honeysuckle at the kitchen door is loaded with flowers (still waiting for hummingbirds), and honeybees, bumblebees, and carpenter bees are avidly visiting the redbuds in full bloom.

The columbines (Aquilegia canadense) that have self-seeded around the house are just coming into flower.

I saw a monarch this afternoon -- I was surprised to see one. They're coming north, but I didn't see any last spring, even though we're on the eastern 'flyway'.

Spring peepers

Earlier this week, I heard spring peepers and American toads singing in the marshy areas adjacent to a lake nearby. This evening (very warm), the peepers were singing away in the retention pond next to the grocery where I frequently shop. Spring is coming on the calendar and is already here in the biological world around us.

The female carpenter bees are looking for sites to drill their larval holes, the chorus of garden birds now includes towhees, cardinals, brown thrashers, wrens, chickadees, and robins, AND the woodchuck(s), I think, have just emerged to have a very nice fresh salad meal on my young spinach plants. Hhrmph.

The squirrels have been digging everywhere, but Mocha (our now low-key, pampered Golden who shares our garden with us, as well as the wildlife) also is stepping on freshly dug beds, as well, much to my dismay). At least, he's not eating my normal spring crop of Tuscan and redbor kale, primarily because the woodchuck(s) ate them in the fall.

These are trying times for a committed wildlife gardener, but diversity is important, and we've pushed out so many species as our cities, suburbs, and rural areas have impinged on natural habitats, it's hard to be too cranky about those species that have been adaptable enough to living with humans that they've been thriving, in the absence of any natural predators.

What would 'consume' a woodchuck, after all, in a suburban food web? A fierce Jack Russell terrier is all that I can think of, followed by cars. The hopeful kids in my programs who think that there are still foxes, bear, wolves, and coyotes in our garden and neighborhoods are echoing the past, instead of current reality, with the possible exception of coyotes.

After I try the Chuckster bait, I may need to resort to attractive fencing, as so many other gardeners have done before me.

A Mockingbird's song

I woke up this morning to a mockingbird's song. He was singing his song cycle - echoing the songs of the other backyard birds. Mockingbirds are tremendous songsters; their repertoire repeats (I think) Carolina wrens, robins, thrashers, cardinals, titmice, doves, etc.

The frost was lovely on the winter annuals and border edges; we're in for a spell of winter after some lovely warm afternoon days that promised spring to come. But for us, here in South Carolina, spring really IS just around the corner. Already, I'm sure, the hepatica are in flower at Station Cove, and along Lake Issaqueena.

The sassafras and blueberry flower buds are swelling, as are the dogwood's, and the foliage of the spring bulbs is already up. The Iphieon has been in flower for some time.

Birds are becoming active

Leaving the house yesterday, I saw a downy woodpecker on the suet feeder, not an unusual sight for winter, but I'm starting to see and hear birds that remind me that spring is on the way. The cheery call of a Carolina wren greeted me this morning, and later, I surprised a female bluebird near the big oak tree in front.

She's the first bluebird I've seen in our garden, although we have many breeding pairs in the botanical garden's meadows. I think we'll try moving the bluebird house on the old Pawlonia to a more attractive spot!

Poking around in the leaf litter in the perennial beds, shoots of spring bulbs are well up, and fresh rosette growth is starting to appear. Hooray!