In like a lion....

High  47 F
Low  19 F

Saturday morning, March 1st, more snow!  The  above picture is of the scene outside!  I took the pictures from inside the house with a cup of coffee in hand.  I am tired of snow and endless monochromatic garden scenes!  Thankfully, snow turned to rain, rain turned to gray skies and gray skies lasted and lasted and finally, this afternoon, the sun came out, the skies became visibly blue and the snow line is receding as I type!    Tucker doesn't really care as he likes to roll in the snow and is happy just being outside!  The afternoon walk yielded a few encouraging surprises.  In fact, the surprise at this shot was so great that an excited, unsteady hand produced this image of an emerging daylily!  It is happening in spite of a cold, wintry start to this month.  It has to be better than February!  Buds are swelling, Cornus kousa

at least these that are out of reach of the deer Magnolia stellata

who continue to use the garden as their feed lot!  They seem to enjoy the Staghorn sumac 'Tiger Eyes' which is curious since the stem does look somewhat antler like.  Here is the just ripped off the branch!  How rude! Here is the undamaged branch with the swelling buds.

One flower in the garden is emerging and it does have wonderful foliage with the added bonus of deer resistance!  Helleborus foetidus or stinking hellebore grows well for me and reseeds freely!  The deer must find it particularly repellent for which I am thankful! In addition, the stone walls look quite nice.  I never tire of looking at them.