There is all manner of crazy going on in my backyard right now. After more than a week of temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s, everything is awake and very active. Two days ago I saw my first bumblebee. Yesterday I noticed honeybees and ants drinking from the birdbath.
My daylilies are out of control. They are shooting up so fast that I could probably drag a lawn chair outside and watch them grow. I want to divide some of them, but a little voice keeps telling me it’s just too early yet. Maybe that little voice doesn’t have a good visual, because if I don’t get out there and divide them soon, it will be too late:
There’s a pair of house finches building a nest in a nesting box that hangs on the side of our house. The goldfinches are singing their breeding songs, but the males are still a drab grayish-brown because they weren’t told to schedule an extra-early spring molt.
My Koreanspice viburnum started blooming yesterday. It usually blooms in early May after the tulips have been showing off for weeks. It beat all the tulips this year except for the tiny species tulips:
It’s probably good something is blooming because while I was walking around taking photographs of all the freaky growth on my plants, I was joined by a Mourning Cloak butterfly. In the interest of full disclosure, they do overwinter as adults and have been known to pop out on days when there’s still snow on the ground, but to me it just added to the narrative of the wackiest spring I can remember.