Finally

Finally, spring has arrived, and I hope it stays! We actually had snow flakes in the air on May 2nd, but hopefully that's the last of that stuff until autumn. At this time, it looks like all of my garage-stored plants survived the winter. Just about every one of them now either is sending up new pitchers and/or flowers. There's probably around a couple dozen visible flower buds now, and I'm assuming more will be forthcoming, now that milder temps have moved in. I'm especially excited to see a few 3-yr old plants with buds. It'll be my first year of doing crosses with plants I raised from seed. If the flowering times work out, I would like to cross two open-pollinated siblings that have buds right now. I'm curious to see what such a cross could create. I also noticed a bud on one of my 'Gin Goblin' plants. I'm not sure how many others that have one of those has gotten a flower yet, but I haven't seen any publicized crosses with that plant yet. I also see a bud on an anthocyanin-free purpurea x jonesii. AF plants intrigue me and I look forward to having a few crosses with that plant, although the offspring won't be AF (unless crossed with another AF plant), but the offspring will carry the gene(s) and can pass it on to future crosses.

So now the waiting game begins for the flowers to actually open. I expect it will be at least a few more weeks until that happens, depending on temperatures. To give a perspective on this spring, compared to last, I was in British Columbia from May 4-May 15 last year, and a couple of flowers on my plants opened during that time frame. This year, there will definitely be no flowers open by May 15. The tallest flower stalk now is about 2" high. Things should be getting into full swing by the end of the month though. I even hear whispers of some very warm weather possibly settling in about 10 days from now. If it does occur, that should really speed things along. For the time being, high temps are in the 60's, and lows in the 30's.