Hi all, It's finally spring in Indiana. I wondered if it would ever come! The Iris reticulata bloomed a long time ago, and are now just tall leaves. The large garden hybrid Narcissus are up and all in flower everywhere. Outside on the rock garden, my Narcissus calcicola are in bloom. A couple of N. fernandezii and one lone N. assoanus are also blooming. Various Ornithogalum and Brodiaea are coming up too, but none is in bloom yet. Trillium nivale is finished, but the first T. sessile and T. cuneatum are about to open. Claytonia are blooming, as are Dicentra cucullaria. Fritillaria pallidoflora are up and in bud, and even one Fritillaria thunbergii is up and after many years at long last is in bud! My first Hymenocallis of the season is blooming in the greenhouse -- Hymenocallis liriosme (my #1261, sent to me by Thad Howard). The flowers are quite large, the cup being ca. 2.5 inches across and the tepals about 9 inches tip to tip. I suspect it has some sort of fragrance, but I can't really tell for sure -- I have no sense of smell anymore. I'm pollinating the flowers of this liriosme with some pollen of H. occidentalis that I dried and stored in the freezer last August. Besides sheer curiosity, I'd like to get a plant that bloomed later in the spring than liriosme but not so late in summer as occidentalis. Has anyone tried this cross? I'd like to know what to expect, and whether it is likely to take or not. One H. liriosme that I planted 2 years ago in the ground outside the south end of my greenhouse is sending up leaves. I'm happy to see that it survived another winter outdoors in the ground here. Seeds of H. eucharidifolia are germinating in the greenhouse, after having been planted last summer. Outdoors in the Crinum bed by the new greenhouse, most of the ones transplanted there last summer seem to be sending up new growth. They did not get much mulch last year, so they had to make it through this past winter -- a relatively mild one -- on their own. It looks as if they did. C. bulbispermum, C. [bulbispermum X lugardiae], and C. variabile were planted in this bed last summer, most being small seeding bulbs but a few being large blooming size plants. What else is happening in the cold Northeast? Best wishes, Jim Shields ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA