Kathy, thank you. My season also started on Saturday. My Primula was first oriental yellow to bloom this year. If you don't have it, I would suggest to add it. It is quite different from other two you have. And the fragrance of leaves is wonderful to my nose.
Looks like my Canary will open tomorrow and Hugonis is probably one week later. Usually CB was the first to open for me, but I lost my original CB to constructors last fall, so only have a baby and it is in quite shady area.

Olga

I love early bloomers------so wonderful after a long winter

My Canary Bird is in full bloom, as are the lilacs, not side by side, unfortunately: I agree the combination sounds stunning. I plan to get another early yellow, perhaps R. primula? and put it beside a lilac that's already in place. I go through a lilac phase/craze every year at this time, and just wish there were more varieties readily available. No wonder this continent's going to the dogs: what can you expect when so few people are willing to plant large shrubs that are fragrant, opulent, and glorious for one month of the year and fade into the background the remaining eleven months? We need more lilacs, as well as Albas, forsythias, spring-flowering spireas, mock orange, snowball bushes and many other unfashionable shrubs). I'm aware this rant is illogical. It's my very pleasant gardening duty to plant all those wonderful, impractical shrubs that people with normal-sized gardens don't have room for.

Melissa, I so fully agree with you! I would also add to your list calycanthus floridus, calycanthus praecox, and philadelphus virginalis. And a lot of azaleas, that bloom just before the first china roses start!

Myloki, I combined pale yellow with pink thanks to a rugosa agnes very close to a rugosa robusta, to form (when full grown) one large mass of flowers. First yellow (agnes), then when Agnes' amazing show has ended, Robusta starts is display of pink.
When robusta has ended, a purple and hardy hibiscus syriacus starts its show.
So as the season procedes, colors become deeper...

Pictures?? I love Father Hugo. I am going to grow that rose some day!

Carol

I'm wondering why my early blooming yellows haven't even formed buds yet. Oh well, maybe they're just slow to warm up...or just a bit young.

Robert

They don't tend to bloom well when young. It took my R. hugonis more than five years to produce a single flower. I was really beginning to wonder if it was getting enough sun and needed to be moved away from the maple.

R. primula has little buds right now. I should look at R. hugonis

My hugonis took some time (2 years) before it start blooming at all and about 3 years before it start blooming well.
Primula was faster, but it was HUGE grafted plant, it bloomed next spring after planting. Canary Bird waited two years before blooming well.
Olga

>>>

I always had an inkling I was unfashionable and now I know. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of all these shrubs so I can plant them in my small residential yard.

Olga, I definitely want to get some more of the early bloomers. Thanks to your earlier enabling, next on my list is Doorenbos Selection.

Melissa, I agree with you regarding fragrance. I put in a hot tub in 2007 and am in the process of building a fragrant garden around it. I currently have a viburnum blooming, a lilac to follow, and daphne to join in somewhere. Yesterday, the company I work for had a team-event in a nearby town. It was supposed to be a treasure hunt with the first team reporting back with the secret word being declared the winners. My team and several other teams, were frantically searching in a park for the solution to our clue. Way across the park I spotted a huge viburnum blooming and I HAD to go get close enough to smell it. I had to make it look like I was trying to solve the clue even though I was really getting a flower fix. Well lo and behold, I found the secret scroll which was the object of our search. I covertly sent a signal to my team mates that I had been successful. I hated to leave that wonderful shrub, but off to the next destination we went. It was an old cemetery which I have never visited. I had high hopes that it would be filled with OGRs and maybe even some ancient daffodils. But with the exception of a few trees and some badly maintained boxwoods, there were nothing but stone markers.

Carol, the rain beat my flowers up pretty badly yesterday, so no pictures yet. I am hoping to get some in the next few days.

Teeandcee, I hope you give them lots of room in your small residential yard because they will bet big.

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: Sample Raven Chase clue

Robert,
I've found that I don't really notice the buds on my early bloomers until right before they start to pop. It is like magic. One day nothing, suddenly flowers. I see buds on the fuller flowered, later roses for a couple of weeks before those early roses bloom. The later roses are still slowly swelling for weeks after those early guys suddenly start flowering out of no where. It is really interesting to me how they do that. But then, I'm a garden nerd and these things intrigue me.
-Stephanie