Tulips and leaf buds

Spring has advances in leaps and bounds now that the temperature went from a couple degrees to 20C in one night or so. Tulips in our yard are happily blooming, birches have a faint green about them, apple trees have buds and cherry trees in the neighboring yards are blooming. Our bushes have little leaves and the butterbur a few flowers. Rhubarb is growing nicely. Wood anemonies are at their best.

Birds and flowers

I absolutely love spring. When the first (and only, as far as I know) crocus opens its flower in our yard, when trees start to get their little buds, when an orchestra of birds chirp and wagtails, starlings and blakcbirds hop on our lawn, when rhubarb pushes its wrinkly sprouts through the still cold dirt, when sun feels warm and wonderful on exposed skin. 

First flowers of the spring

Over the past couple days snow has melted almost completely in our yard and now it smells like spring, looks like spring, even sounds like spring with the birds chirping way into the late evening. Bunnies are actively looking for mates, invading our yard too, driving our dogs crazy. Tulips are pushing through the barely melted ground and the first scilla sibericas are now blooming. The apple trees have pushed out the tiniest of buds.

Lilacs, berries, apple blossoms...

That yard of ours. I went out to take som photos again. The other apple tree is a cloud of flowers, bees busily buzzing from flower to flower. Gooseberry and red currant bushes are heavy with tiny baby berries. Lilacs are not in full bloom yet, but getting there, same goes for lilies in the valley in the forest. There's strawberries growing everywhere, even blueberry bushels in the forest. Rhubarb is tall and some knapweeds are growing here and there. This will also be a huge pine cone year in our yard.

Apple blossoms and other flowers

I was away for a couple days and when I returned this evening, the apple trees had finally started to bloom, a little bit anyway. The other one is on a sabbatical this year, so there's only a few flowers here and there, but the other one will bear a whole lot of apples!

The lilacs between our and the neighbor's yards have buds, as do some of the lilies of the valley in the forest behind our yard. Next to them grow stellaria holosteas (great stitchworts) with their delicate little flowers.

The last of our tulips are growing in the forest, a group of three and one stray one. They are tall! At least 50cm tall beautiful ones.

Those fabulous tulips

Those red tulips have been floweriing absolutely beautifully on our backyard for some time now. In the sun they open up big like wine goblets. Unfortunately, everything comes to an end at some point, even tulips. Many of them have started to wilt and the rest of them look like they soon will, too. They're still quite fabulous though!

Many of the seeds we planted way back when are groing nicely already, like radishes and sunflowers. Some not at all yet, like basil, eg.

Apple blossoms still have not opened. I'm a bit impatient, I know ;) Oh, and we'll get some strawberries too :)

The strange tulip

Spotted a strange tulip on our yard. It was otherwise red, like all of the rest of them are, but one petal was half-yellow.

Birches and our garden

Birches are turning green. The ultimate sign of spring for me! Some are already very green, other types of birches are only getting there, some aren't even remotely green yet. The birches in our neighbor's yard are of the first type, those two latter ones can be found in our yard. 

In our yard, the flowers continue to bloom, tulips are the size of tea cups, and the apple trees are pushing out green and the surprise-berry-bushes have leaves. I found a ladybug snuggled in the nook of a twig on the other tree. A couple of pheasants came for a visit.

Our little starts of a garden have started to sprout, at least some of the stuff we planted. Broccoli, sunflowers, radishes, a cucumber or two, marigolds, chives at least. The nights have still been too cold for basil, parsley, dill, peppers et al.

We live inside the city limits of Helsinki, but we really don't live IN the CITY. I'm loving it!