I went to water some orchids in the greenhouse today but the water barrel had so much ice, I couldn’t get at the water! We started the week with a dusting of snow and ended on some warm-ish, sunny days. But the ice and snow are sticking around just to remind us that it is still February and winter won’t let go for a while.

In anticipation of spring, I’m starting more seeds. Last week I planted petunias, nicotiana, and verbena seeds. They are being pokey about sprouting but the petunias are up.

Another fun seed that has sprouted is a hoya seed I’m growing for the On the Ledge Sow Along.

There might be another seedling or two coming along in this pot–it would be fun to have a couple of different kinds.

The other seeds that will get started this weekend are vegetable seeds that need a long headstart to succeed in our short summers. I’ve committed to providing seedlings to a couple of friends, both flowers and veggies. That adds a level of pressure but it also excites me to know that I’m getting some younger people excited about plants. I’ll sneak some native seedlings in there, too!

Today was a perfect day for getting some garden cleanup done and some grafting!

Here is the cleaned-up memory garden. It doesn’t look like much right now. It will transform into something completely different in a month and for about six months after that.

Clean-up involved cutting back some dead stems and pulling a few weeds. I just left the stems where I found them in case they house any insects. They will get covered by the bursting vegetation and break down into the soil by the end of summer.

I found some nice clumps of crocus blooming today and couldn’t resist some photos.

It is a tight race between crocus and iris when it comes to the flowers I most photograph in the spring. Below are some more of the forced dwarf iris that came into glorious bloom this week. This dwarf iris bulb mix was very different from other mixes in that it didn’t have any yellows but had the very light blue/whitish flowers, instead. Stunning!

The last thing I did outside was to graft a few cherry branches onto the seedling cherry in the driveway bed. I grafted one branch from a sweet cherry on there and one from the pie cherry. There are already two grafts on that seedling. It keeps throwing up sucker-ish branches so I just keep wanting to graft. I’m not super confident in the timing or my expertise this year but it was worth a try.