What a day. Although it was overcast much of the day and even sprinkled now and then, it was unseasonably warm. It’s now about 5:35 P.M. and the temperature is about 63º F. I spent the day working in the garden, mostly cutting down the growth of the more robust herbaceous perennials and trimming back various vines. A spot of color caught my eye this afternoon: Iris rosenbachiana has a flower wide open. The plant in question is out in the open, not in the bulb frame. And the dragon is up: Dracunculus vulgaris not only has sprouts up but is showing tightly furled, bright green new foliage. That’s got to be bad news at this date. The first tommy of the year was wide open today. Leucojum vernum has emerged – tips of foliage are up, but I don’t see signs of bloom yet. Snowdrops in general are blooming – almost every cultivar has blooms or buds up except for the later blooming plicatus forms. . And so once again I play the game of trying to match my plants against the images on Mark’s and Judy’s snowdrop sites. I have clumps received as named cultivars decades ago which do not match anything on those sites. They must be “also-rans” and “has-beens”. Lysichiton are starting to grow: will they bloom this year? Last summer a friend gave me some bulbs of Tulipa clusiana – the old presumably pentaploid running form. I saw her plants the other day: several square yards with scattered rosettes of glaucous foliage with a fine red rim. Does anyone else grow this? When I first started to grow Lachenalia, I was attracted to the large-flowered, very colorful L. aloides sorts. But a new favorite is emerging: L. mutabilis. It’s well named: the flower color seems to change not only day to day but from one year to the next. Last year the plants had flowers which went through a blue phase; this year, the flowers have not yet shown any blue but they are in a green phase which in its way is just as attractive. I counted over fifty flowers on the raceme. I said the flowers have not shown any blue: that depends on what you call blue. The top of the inflorescence has flowers which I assume are sterile; these are bright amethyst and are very similar to the sterile flowers seen in some Muscari. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7 where It may not be spring, but it feels like it; and if you know where to look, it looks like it. My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/