Spring is my favorite season of the year, because Mother Nature is waking up from winter’s deep sleep, bringing out the beauty of every living thing.

I enjoy spending my free time outdoor, working in my vegetable garden, my flower patches, and capturing the beauty of nature in my photos.

The weather was very cooperative for the past few days, so my garden was ready for some TLC (all the gardeners out there know that weeds are the first thing that grows), so today was gardening time for me, and of course a picture session to share with you.

Hardy Viola -  these colorful flowers keep on reseeding themselves from year to year.  They bloom throughout May and into June.  Later on these plants become to leggy, and begin to dry out, thus need to be removed, and replaced with some pretty summer annuals.

Creeping Phlox in full bloom.  This is a perennial plant, which blooms in late April and early May.  The foliage stays green whole summer, and turns brownish during the winter season.

Sweetly fragrant Lilly of the Valley, is my favorite flower from childhood.  It reminds me of the walks through the woods with my mom, and the excitement of creating a nice bouquet for my grandma.

Lilly of the Valley grows nicely in partial shade, or full sun.  Their very dainty paper white bells-like flowers tend to hide between the very full foliage, but you can smell their sweetness from a distance.

Last fall I replanted my strawberry plants out of my main garden patch (due to overcrowding), to an outside area next to the garden, and to my surprise they will be producing fruits this year, as you can see from the abundant flowers they are covered with.  My granddaughter loved picking off her own strawberries last year, and will be delighted to do the same this year.

Pictured above is Flat Leaf Italian Parsley, which remained in ground over  winter.  It really had grown considerably in the past few days, due to the favorable weather conditions we had lately.

I prefer the Flat Leaf Italian Parsley over the Curly Leaf Parsley, due to it’s much stronger flavor enhancer properties.  How about you?

The Sorrel plants also survived the winter, and are ready to be picked off and used in soup, or salad.  The leaves resemble spinach, but have a quite tart flavor.

This  is my Yukon Gold potato plant, which I planted 3 weeks ago.   If you wanted to plant some potatoes in your garden, and did not have a chance yet, no worries, you still can to it now. Check out my previous post to find out how.

Here you see my FREE plants, once again.  To the left are self seeded tomatoes from last year’s crop, and to the right are  potatoes sprouting from my kitchen scrap potato peels.   Since potato plants can not replanted, and these are growing too closely together, I will just have to pull some of them out, to provide adequate room for the remaining ones.

Tomato plants, on the other hand, can be replanted, as soon as they get to be about 4-5 inches tall.  I will select the strongest ones, and plant them into their permanent location.

Please share your gardening stories with all of us.

I know many of you still have lots of snow, and feel like Spring is not even on the horizon yet, but have hope…it’s closer than you think.

We had our share of snow, ice, and frigid weather, but we also were blessed with few lovely, warm and sunny days, giving me a chance to take a peak at my garden.

To my surprise, I found some wonderful signs of Spring (No, my Daffodils are NOT blooming yet this year…this picture is just a tease…)

You know how I love to share all my excitement with all of you, so here are some pictures I took today, to prove to you that Spring is “springing”!

These Daffodils are about 2 inches tall now….how exciting

Tulips are poking through as well, but I am sure many of them did not survive  the Winter Season, and I will need to plant new ones in the Fall.  For some reason, this is the case with my tulips every year.

Please share any suggestions you might have, why my tulips are not coming back in the Spring.  I think something is eating up the bulbs….

Here are Hyacinths poking through.  My favorite Spring flower, since their blooms are so beautiful, and very fragrant.

This should definitely give you hope that Spring is just around the corner in your neck of the woods as well.

A couple of weeks ago, on Saturday, we had a gorgeous day.  It was sunny, pleasantly warm, with the temperature  in the low 50ties, but what was so peculiar about it, is that it’s still the middle of winter.  Mother Nature reminded us of this reality during this past weekend.

As you know, I love nature and gardening, so I could not resist to go outside and check out how my garden is doing this time of the year.

I was very surprised, and quite confused, when I noticed some of my spring plants are already popping out of the ground.  It definitely is way too early for them to be peeking out, but then again, it’s the call of Mother Nature.

I enjoy sharing everyday events with all of you, so I grabbed my camera and took some pictures, just to give you some hope that even though you might not see signs of spring in your area, spring definitely is on its way.

These are my Daffodils peeking out of the ground.

Red Sedum is squeezing out from between the old shoots from last year.

Hyacinths are poking through, and a nearby tulip is trying to compete as well.

In case you are wondering why I have a Christmas Cactus at the top of this post….well wonder no more, since the poor thing is confused, and decided to bloom now, rather than for Christmas, as it’s expected blooming season.

There is a very nice story behind that cactus as well, so here it comes.

Few years back, I worked with a really nice bunch of ladies who also knew how much I loved plants and flowers, and I had a Christmas Cactus on my desk.  While I was going on vacation, instead of taking the plant home, they offered to take care of it for me, and they did a wonderful job.

When I came back to work (two weeks later), I noticed that my plant looked great, vibrant, full of life.  I was very grateful that they took such good care of my plant, but they both had this certain look on their face, that something was not right.

As honest as they were, all true friends should be, they informed me that this was a replacement plant, as they “killed” the original one, without knowing what really happened.  “It just died” – they exclaimed!  I did not mind.  It was just a plant, and plants do die.  No big deal.

We all laughed uncontrollably about it.  They felt so much better by telling me the truth, and I could not believe that they actually went to so much trouble finding another cactus for me, an out of season plant during that particular time of the year.

So, when the time came for me to move and leave the company, I took the cactus with me, and now every time I look at it (it is hanging in my kitchen window), I think of our friendship and reminisce about all the great times we spent together.

I hope you enjoyed the Christmas Cactus story, and the early signs of spring.