The blooming violets are such a wonderful surprise, especially after last week’s arctic blast. They are very resilient plants, violets, a feature that delights at the beginning of spring and exasperates in the middle of summer, when they greedily take over the flower beds. They have a lot of competition this year from the much larger plants I added last fall, but they still should have plenty of space to shine, since they fill every nook and crevice when left to their own devices. To this end, they started early.
March continues its seesaw temperature pattern and the summer like conditions reverted to more seasonally appropriate weather, which means rainy and cold. Here comes April’s Fool.
The spring flowers have started coming out, the clematis and the roses are sprouting leaves, the trees are in bloom, what a delightful sight! One more month, one more month…
The new perennials are on their way from the nursery, more woodland natives for the shade, most of which I’ve never grown before. I feel bad that the flower beds are still covered in debris, I guess I know what is on the gardening schedule next week, unless, of course, it gets cold again.
The rugosas shook off last week’s freeze like it was nothing and picked up where they left off, in fact all the roses seem to have gotten a good start this year, so I’m hoping for flowers.

Author's Bio: 

Main Areas: Garden Writing; Sustainable Gardening; Homegrown Harvest
Published Books: “Terra Two”; “Generations”; "The Plant - A Steampunk Story"; "Letters to Lelia"; "Fair"; "Door Number Eight"; "A Year and A Day"; "Möbius' Code"
Career Focus: Author; Consummate Gardener;
Affiliation: All Year Garden; The Weekly Gardener; Francis Rosenfeld's Blog

I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might use it in their own gardening practice.