And so it goes.  The maples have all turned green.  The lunaria’s purple flowers have turned into silver dollars studded with partially formed seeds.  The viburnums’ snowballs have melted. The ranunculus are breathing their last.  Butterfly Ranunculus too.  (Speaking of which, I saw our first monarch the other day.  Always a treat.)  The carpenter bees are attempting to undo 13 years of my efforts, rafter by rafter.  The dogs and cats are adorable as ever.  The guinea that found itself tangled in bailing twine from the neighbor’s field is doing quite well.  I guess I should tell that story.

  Last week, Kali saw a guinea that looked like its shoelaces were tied together.  Being expert biologists, Mandy and I knew that birds don’t wear shoes and investigated further.  We got close enough to see the problem, but for 3 days, the little rascal escaped our efforts to catch it and free it of its entanglements.  Rocky Balboa would have been ashamed at my failed attempts to catch a chicken-ish bird whose feet were tied together.  On the 4th day I get a call from Mandy to come quickly to the tunnels.  She managed to put up a make shift fence with bird netting and corral the little bugger towards a tunnel.  We gently herded it into the smallest tunnel we have.  We are not good at catching birds.  Yet, eventually after much flapping and flailing on all our parts, we managed to get it into a corner and get a frost blanket over it.  Mandy held it tight, while I carefully cut the plastic twine from its little legs.  It was dug in pretty deep and we half expected the bird to lose a foot.  The last of it was cut free and we set him gently outside.   He hobbled away, then paused and turned back to us and said, “thanks man” and went under a spirea bush.  

  Just yesterday we saw it again and low and behold he’s running with the rest of the tiny dinosaurs.  A slight limp, but not bad enough to be ostracized by the others (they’re terribly judgy), so all in all a great success and a hats off to Mandy for orchestrating an amazing corral on the fly.

  The snapdragons are coming in gorgeously, the campanula are barely starting to flower, and the godetia have a little time yet to go.  The poppies are still doing well and looking beautiful and the peonies are trickling in.  We may have a limited amount of peonies available, but they'll likely sell out quick.  Nature of the beast.  This also might be the last week to grab ranunculus before they are gone.

  We are hoping to have flowers for Mother’s Day bouquets and will definitely let you know in advance if that’s possible.  Everything is so advanced this spring though, so we aren’t sure if things will bloom too early.  Time will tell me and I’ll tell you.

  For those celebrating Ramadan, we’ve got some beautiful poppies and snapdragons for your Eid Al Fitr feast next week.

  We’ve gotten lots of happy photos of people’s baby heirloom mums being potted up in various corners of the U.S. and we are happy to see it.  We just got some new varieties in the mail ourselves and will be making moms of them in short order, so we can expand our offerings even further and share with you some of our new favorites.

  Mandy and the team are still taking cuttings and making babies of our heirloom mums, so those of you who missed out on previous sales will have a couple more opportunities to get your own before the summer comes.

  We’ll also be making some dahlia tubers available in about a month or so for you southern growers who’d like productive heat tolerant varieties at a timing that’s more suitable for southern plantings.

  And lastly, just a reminder that the store is back to its normal hours Thursday-Friday, 10am-5pm and Saturday, 9am-3pm.
Have a great weekend!
-Steve