The end of March, and the snow lingers on… The vista in our neck of the woods a week or so ago.
Spring is coming hard this year. It‘s still below zero almost every night, there’s an awful lot of ice on the riverbank and piled up on the sandbars, and there are still a few snowbanks in the shady spots. Nary a bit of green on any tree, though there are burgeoning leaf buds on the lilacs and cottonwood trees.
What’s a yearning-for-spring gardener to do, then, but to throw an overnight bag in the car, summon a travelling companion, and head out on a little horticultural road trip?!
Using the excuse of a plant show and sale put on by a garden club we belong to (long distance, as it were), we headed off to Vancouver – seven non-stop hours by car away – for a whirlwind round of visiting the two major botanical gardens, hobnobbing with fellow botanists, admiring the spectacular specimens in the plant show, and (of course!) spending far too much money on new-to-us plants.
Oh, and we did hit a few used book stores, too. With predictable results.
Back home now, with heads full of garden dreams, and a stack of potentially wonderful reading material to fill up the few extra minutes between our very late evening meals and lights-out.
The posting silence lately can be blamed squarely on the season. Good intentions galore, and some interesting things piling up on the “must deal with” stack, but I just can’t focus…
Shall try harder.
As recompense for the recent blog silence, here are a very few glimpses of what we saw on our recent travels. It’s spring down south!
The most beautiful Pasque Flowers I’ve ever yet seen – Pulsatilla grandiflora, University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, Vancouver, B.C., March 31, 2017.
Our native Skunk Cabbage, Lysichiton americanus. None showing here yet, but in full exotic bloom in warmer climes. UBC Botanical Garden, March 31, 2017.
Too tender for our region, but a high point of spring coastal visits – glorious magnolias at UBC, March 31, 2017.
Rose-like Camellias bloom in the mild coastal rain. Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, B.C., April 1, 2017.
Leaves & Pages 
Beautiful pics!
I’ve never heard of a Skunk Cabbage! I hope it doesn’t smell as bad as it sounds 😉
Looking forward to reading about the books you picked u
We have two sorts of skunk cabbage here in Canada, the eastern and the western. They are some of the first wild plants to show signs of life after the snow melts. Eastern skunk cabbage even produces measurable heat (really!) as it pushes through the ice of its forest and swampland habitat. Fascinating plants, both of these. The “skunkiness” is not particularly obtrusive, at least not to my nose. If you are familiar with Crown Imperials, Fritillaria imperialis, that is what it resembles. But elusively, unless one gets up really close. Here’s a quick link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysichiton_americanus
Must get a review or two up. Maybe tonight?
What beautiful flowers – thanks for sharing! I love it when the spring blooms start peeking through – always cheers me up!
Thanks for the taste of spring… still waiting for it in southern Ontario… only signs yet are snowdrops, crocuses and a hellebore!
A few scillas here, one lonely yellow crocus. Oh, and a few patches of snowdrops! Lots of winter kill this year, our preliminary poking about in the flowerbeds is revealing lots of mushy plants. Ah, well. So it goes…
That sounds like an ideal trip, plants and books. Beautiful photos, thanks.
Lovely! I saw pasque flowers growing on a hillside near Drumheller last April. So beautiful, with bluebirds in the bare trees.
Aren’t they lovely in their natural habitat? I lived for a few years just north of Calgary, and down around Cochrane the hillsides were covered with these in late April.
What was so interesting to me was how hot it was in mid-April during the day, yet overnight there was a hard frost and everything was silver in the morning…
A very “desert-like” climate – burning hot days and bitter cold nights. Perhaps something atmospheric having to do with lack of any appreciable variations in terrain? And lack of large trees in the habitat? Astonishing how trees affect the surrounding temperatures; they buffer and temper temperature and humindity extremes to a measurable degree.
This said, our own region (BC Cariboo-Chilcotin) is subject to these severe temperature swings between night and day, and we have trees galore, and lots of hills and valleys.
You timed your visit well! It’s amazing how many flowers have come out in the last week here – definitely feeling spring-like (a very, very late spring by our standards, but it still counts).
Things are looking a bit rough after our hard winter – the hellebores at UBC were downright tattered! – but the spring bloom is definitely happening. We’re coming down again in two weeks, have been invited on a garden tour in Washington which leaves from Langley, so will try to steal an extra day to revisit Vancouver as well. I’m expecting full spring glory at that point! The cherry trees at Van Dusen were just showing the faintest blush of pink this time round.
Beautiful flower pictures and used books — what more could anyone ask?
Thanks for sharing. Hear in the mid-east (Toronto) all that’s in my garden, even now, are the brave little crocuses. Usually by this time they’ve been up for weeks.
Many of my own crocuses seem to be missing in action – they are just not showing up where they should be! We had a brutal winter; it went from very mild in November to bitter cold literally overnight, with no snow cover, and I fear many of our usually-hardy perennials and bulbs couldn’t handle the shock. Now this late, late spring. Ah, well, makes us appreciate the good years…
Of course, I mean to say “here”. Duh.