The First Tulip of the Year

When I got home yesterday I found the first of my tulips blooming. It's not that big or showy but it is a tulip, and it has color, so I think it should count as the first of the season.

Yesterday wasn't the first day I came home to find the Sweet Violets in full bloom but it is nevertheless an amazing display in a small space on either side of the path. On a warm day they fill the air with their sweet odor. That will come.

And the Hellebore Snow Bunting has lived up to its name and is in full bloom a couple of weeks now despite the long tedious climb towards spring we have experienced this year. Many times named varieties of "catalogue perennials" are more hype and salesmanship than reality, but in this case Snow Bunting lived up to its sales pitch. I put it in the bed two years ago, it bloomed lightly last year and now look at it.

The Prologue

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heth

The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open eye

(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages...

Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

Perhaps England's spring is more advanced than our own because again we are confronted with the hesitancy of spring and its reluctance to arrive in all its potential glory. Yet bit by bit it is coming with a clump of crocus here and there, the Winter Aconite finally peeking through the duff left as winter retreated, and the tiny dark blue iris coming forward to keep the crocus company, and hungry bees seek the sweet liquor found in the depths of the flower, much as the pilgrims sought the saint.