Snowdrops

The snowdrops always surprise me. There's a patch of them in the northern reaches of Prospect Park (furthest from our local, southern end) that always blooms weeks ahead of anything else. And this really was the winter for snow, and real cold, at last.

The trees are many weeks away from leafing out, but buds on their bare are beginning to swell. the leaf litter below is thick, and the snowdrops lift brown leaves as they rise.

Even though I am drawn to native plants (wherever I - and they - may be), it's hard to dislike these small tokens of botanical life. And their emergence always makes me wonder what is happening, right now, in that narrow valley in the Catskills, where a wild, clean stream is rushing from the mountains, and a sunny slope is beginning to think about thawing.

It's the last day of dark afternoons (although even those have been growing brighter). Daylight Savings Time will give us sudden, Sunday sunlight, right past 6pm.

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Shrubs with White Flowers

It's early March. No new leaves, yet, in Brooklyn, but the Asian witch hazels are in bloom and little past bloom. Snowdrops have been out for weeks, as usual. Crocuses have appeared. It's a good time to dream of gardening.

Viburnum, above, the scented snowballs belong to a V. carlesii cultivar. I make a fizzing cordial from them every mid-spring.

One of the sweetest garden fragrances I know belongs to daphne.

 And a fat rhododendron on our terrace in very early summer.

I made a list of 17 shrubs with white flowers for a Gardenista article, because who doesn't want their garden to gleam at night?

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