Surprise! (Well, some are…)
Bits of outdoor floral color in Pennsylvania, and a special guest
Yesterday (March 7) we hit 75°F in our backyard¹. The day before we hit 76°F. There were showers and wind and a wind warning from NWS followed by a storm watch followed by a nasty storm WARNING (No, seriously people, it’s happening, get your collective butts inside, okay?), and yep, that’s spring in south-central Pennsylvania.
Tomorrow the prediction is for a possible rain-snow mix. Also spring in south-central PA².
But we have flowers! Somewhat. Nice for us in March, anyway.
Good ol’ crocus, because of course!
In the fall I planted “snow crocus” on a whim. Tiny bulbs, little flowers, but they were supposed to come up while the weather was still cold. Nope, came up about the same time as their larger cousin. Surprise! Still cute, though.
Usually we wait a week between when the crocus open and our mini-daffodils pop. This year, it was two days. Surprise!
And then there are these little flowers. Weeds, really. But this year, my Apple Photos identified them as Birdeye Speedwell, an invasive plant from Eurasia. Come April, when the flowers are done, I’ll start weeding them. No worries, they always come back.
And we have our first hyacinth making an appearance. <sigh> If (when!) we get some cold nights, these will get frost-burned something fierce.
Did I mention there’s snow in the forecast for tomorrow? Surprise…
But there’s also an indoor surprise — poinsettia. The plants below are from Christmas 2019; we kept them after they lost their colored leaves because why not? Even green poinsettias are pretty. Then last year, just sitting up in our bedroom, they turned color, just after the holiday season. Seemed odd, because my understanding (from reading and past experience) was that poinsettias need very stringent periods of light and dark to turn. Either ours didn’t get the memo, or there is just something about our bedroom? But this year, Christmas came and went, no colors. Aw, shucks. Wait, the little one looks a little reddish… By mid-January, the little one was definitely red, the middle one was looking pale… By February, the little one was in full-blown red-bloom mode, the middle one was happy and white, and the big one (about as large as the other two put together, even after I cut it back in early 2021) was bringing up the rear.
Surprise!
Submitted in response to Dennett’s Surprises in Nature prompt.
Edit: that “light mixed precipitation” showed up Wednesday (March 9) morning:
¹I pulled this off our backyard weather station dashboard. Yes, I installed a backyard weather station, which is also tied into our house network and send me texts when some parts get too cold or too hot or too humid or it hasn’t rained lately or it’s rained a LOT lately. I can’t control much, but dammit, I know what’s going on around my own house! (Also part of Wunderground’s neighborhood data collectors.)
²Also the northern Chicago suburbs where I grew up. When you live between the vast Midwest plains and the second largest Great Lake, a minor change in wind direction is all it takes to make a major change in temperature, precipitation, and humidity. Clothing Layers Are Our Friends, I learned growing up.
