First Flower of Spring 2014

March 31st, 2014

Today it was 61 degrees out, woohoo, finally, after such a cold cold Winter & Spring. Of course, tommorow it starts getting cold again, but today was nice, and I spied my first flower.

I was out in the garden doing what you should do this time of year, which is prune trees if they need to be pruned, and clean up old spent perennials from last year, getting the garden ready for new growth. You prune trees now because they store all their energy in their roots while dormant, so by cutting off dormant limbs you’re not cutting out any of the tree’s stored energy – but then you wait until the end of Winter to do it because that way the wound is open for longer. Once the sap starts flowing the tree will close it up, and all that sap, since it has fewer limbs to go into, will push up and out and generate a lot of new growth.

First Flower 2014

So while out doing this and pruning my bald cypress I noticed a little crocus poking out and I was thoroughly surprised, the snow only just melted, and in fact, in shady areas, it still hasn’t melted. We’ve got a few inches still, and the ground only just unfroze too in most areas, but I guess the crocuses were as anxious for Spring as me.

My first flower is always a crocus, but this year it is purple.

In 2012, hah, I remember 2012, a warm Spring, the end of March already had fruit trees blooming. My first flower was a yellow crocus on March 10th. In 2011 it was the same flower, on the 15th, in 2010 on the 16th, and in 2009 also on the 15th. This is the Michigan misery metric I use, the date of the first bloom dictates how miserable winter has been. It looks like I forgot to check in 2013.

So this year was slightly different, a purple one was first, and it was in a new location from prior first blooms, and of course, it was practically April before it showed up.

Posted in: Gardening » 

5 Responses to “First Flower of Spring 2014”

  1. Laleh Molander  Says:
    April 4th, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    Nice picture. It seems like you have the same climate as here in Denmark . We have been fortunate to have a surprisingly mild winter. This means that we could actually enjoy the crocuses in the sun.

  2. Chris  Says:
    April 14th, 2014 at 4:17 pm

    Just starting to cool down here in Brisbane after a fairly long hot summer, but luckily we have had some late rain.

  3. Tracey  Says:
    May 12th, 2014 at 6:40 pm

    It’s just finally getting to where we’ve got consistent temps here. I’m behind on getting my new seeds in, but hopefully I’ll get caught up soon!

  4. Native Wildflowers  Says:
    May 16th, 2014 at 6:54 pm

    Amazing! I too had this same flower blooming first in our garden. This is the first year mine has bloomed. Do they sometimes bloom yellow? I am new to Crocuses and mine was only purple. Or is there another color of them? Very interesting.

  5. J.Crowdle  Says:
    May 23rd, 2014 at 4:58 am

    Here in Boston and the Northeast the cold this year means that some of us lost newly planted stock and even plants that had been in the ground a long time, so we are doing a lot of pruning to remove winter damaged foliage and plant replacement.

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