Some early winter color.

This past weekend the plans for the front yard "overhaul" were officially started.   There will be less grass (as in none) and more planting beds and a picket fence.  We even ordered some grow lights and shelves so that I'll be able to start more from seed.  Our hope is that we can grow more vegetables in our front yard where it is full sun.  My hope is that I can convince my husband that he will get to be in charge of the vegetable garden, explaining that watering and weeding those beds will be a great time to unwind after a stressful day at work.  I even threw in the suggestion of having a beer while he did those things.  Now I hope that we'll have a nice dry week either late winter or early spring when we can get started. 
Until then we are having another nice stretch of dry sunny weather and everyone around here has headed out to their gardens to get a head start on weeding.  The Littlest Gardener and I worked in the side yard and path garden weeding and cutting back plants.  Again I was amazed at all that was going on.  Almost all of the Clematises have new growth, the ribes leaves are starting to open, the blueberry bushes all have leaf buds - some even beginning to open and more bulbs are making their way out of the ground.

 Hellebore 'Royal Heritage'

 Hellebore - this was a seedling from some of the 'Royal Heritage', I found lots of seedling in this area.

 Another Hellebore 'Blue Lady'

 The Greigii tulips that I found at the grocery store are coming up through Dianthus 'Sooty'.

 Purple Wood Spurge growing in a container has pretty purple new growth

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 Primroses sitting in the sun waiting to be planted.

 The Littlest Gardener planting more of the Sword Fern, I'm hoping some of them do come up.

 The Pansies seem to have recovered from the cold we had a while ago.

Violas in one of my "girl" planters.

I realize that a lot of the country is having terrible blizzards and ice, but hopefully seeing this little bit of color will help.  We are definitely still at risk of snow here, in fact it will be in the 20's the next couple of nights.  February is generally a very cold month here so hopefully all this winter color will survive whatever weather comes our way.

January 2011 Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

After the snow, rain, cold and wind we've been having I had to wonder if there would be a flower blooming at all right now.   Today is the first bloom day of 2011 and I'm happy to have a few flowers to share.  I looked back at last year's January bloom day post and found that the same flowers were blooming, just more of each of them.

Sweet Box or Sarcococca ruscifolia started blooming at the end of December.  The scent from these tiny flowers is delicious.

Now imagine a whole row of them blooming at once... Yum!

Hellebore 'Blue Lady' is the only Hellebore blooming but the buds are up on most of the others so it shouldn't be too long.

The only Violas blooming now, the rest are still on a break since the first freeze in November.  Hopefully they'll get back to work and start blooming soon.

The Pansies seem to be having a tough time too with the weather, not many are blooming right now.  I did find one very tattered purple Pansy in the front that must have self seeded and the hummingbirds seem to love it.

And speaking of self seeding just look at where this breadseed Poppy decided to grow.  This is the base of the basketball hoop.  What a strange place to try to grow, and it's also the only poppy seedling I've seen.  It has survived snow and freezing in it's plastic growing spot.

Another exciting find was that the Bleeding Hearts have started to pop up.  I found that they were doing the same thing last winter at this time, so they are right on track.

Join Carol at May Dreams Gardens to see what she and other gardeners have blooming right now in their gardens.