Melissa - beautifully written, as usual! I agree completely - we are also having an unusual dry Feb, and the last few days it has been unusually warm also. I have been walking around the garden - many things which are normally winter blooming here, such as the Japanese quince and the hellebores and camellias, are in full bloom. The flowering crab apple tree is about to explode. There are roses blooming too - mostly the old teas, which are evidently responding to the temperatures, instead of the "hours of sunlight".

Our hillsides are dotted with huge old acacia trees in full bloom - giants dressed 100% in bright yellow. My DH and I are about to go for a bike ride alongside a protected creek and estuary - the water birds are all paired up, and I can't wait to see the goslings and ducklings, etc. in a few weeks. Such a perfect time of year!

Jackie

Ditto here too, Melissa. I love your post. Only difference here is less ambition to prune anything woody. I do want to trim off the perennial's old growth, but I'm mostly letting the roses be. I have some injured canes to prune off but I'm waiting until after the Spring bloom. I'm working on organic fertilizer distribution, along with bagged manure/compost topping. Working on the soil, basically. I'll have to check the emitters soon too. Without the irrigation system here I suspect the garden would be toast. Our rainfall is usually only in Winter and about 23 inches total average per year here, which I think is half of yours. We are 5 years here now, so things are looking more established. I'm really looking forward to the lilacs and clematis too.

We just turned our entire garden irrigation system on, after almost a month of no rain. Usually we don't turn it on until late March. Hoping to be able to turn it off again soon. My DH and I ran around yesterday, turning on the 25 stations one at a time, to make sure there were no "geysers" - usually caused by critters chewing on the lines. We only found one, which my DH fixed, but then this morning I realized we had missed one, as I looked at the remnants of a stream of water which went all the way down our long driveway. He fixed that one this morning, so hopefully we are OK for now. In March, when hopefully we are going to turn it on for the entire 6-7 month dry season, we will be able to do a slower, more thorough test of all of the stations.

Jackie

Just lovely, Melissa! You’ve beautifully captured the essence of our existence; do we live in now or tomorrow?

We have to take time to catch these moments, as they will be fleeting. I can only imagine that fragile little violet in your hand...I wish I could see them! (I’m also a big fan of Houseman.) :-)

”That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.”

I am hankering to start cleaning up but am forcing myself to wait until the temperature has warmed up enough for insects to complete whatever they need to do in the hollow stems of herbaceous plants and leaf litter before disturbing them. This of course means a more frenzied spring and a delay in getting the garden visitor-ready, but I have become a convert to the cause. I’m still learning so welcome all advice.

The bugs are pretty lively here, and what I read in the news suggests they need all the friendly places they can find. Bees, bumblebees, hoverflies and other insects have been busy on the sarcococca and other flowering plants in the garden. I read to leave some plant litter, let some wild plants grow--many are attractive. Lord knows I have no difficulty following these instructions, as I like a wildish garden anyway, thinking it both the prettiest and the healthiest. And no -cides! Kitasei, good luck.

We've been watering some, too. I'm hoping our lack of winter rains will be compensated for by spring precipitation, as we've had at times in the past few years.

Sheila, my heavier pruning likely has to do with my climbers being twelve and fifteen years old and having accumulated a lot of aged wood, as I don't prune them all yearly: not enough time. A year ago I looked at 'Crepuscule' and realized that it was horribly overgrown and in need of drastic cutting back of old wood, but I couldn't remove all the old canes because there wouldn't be any rose left. I cut back 'Noella Nabonnand' very hard once, and it sulked for two or three years after that. So I learned a lesson. In the case of 'Crepuscule' I cut back a good portion of the oldest wood a year ago, but left enough so the rose wouldn't sulk; this time around I'm getting much of the rest of the most damaged growth, as there are now enough young canes to replace them. At least, I hope so. I hope to have a good, rejuvenated rose this year. 'Jaune Desprez' also needs heavy pruning, which I've been working on.

Perma, good to meet another Houseman enthusiast, and thanks for the quote. Do you grow any of the native Florida violets? None are fragrant that I know of, unfornately, but there are some lovely ones. I remember some beautiful ones we had growing on the north side of my childhood home for a while: very pale, almost white, with a purple flush, long stems, spade-shaped light green leaves. There was also a light violet one with deeply cut leaves, uncommon. Those were the prettiest of several varieties growing wild locally, this in north Florida.

I did not realize there were wild violets in N FL, so this is wonderful news! I will see if I can track them down. Thanks so much, Melissa! :-)

Wild Violets in N FL got my attention lol so I googles and found this. I think there are some of these in my yard or back by the little river branch behind us. https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/ornamentals/florida-violets.html

I took a look at sultry_jasmine's link--thanks for posting it--and found my childhood white violet: it's the white form of Viola sororia. The one with the deeply cut leaves may be V. pedata, the bird's foot violet, the single-colored form. I've also seen the bog violet, but it's not as attractive a species as the other two.

You're welcome, Perma! I think you should have no trouble finding these.

That will be my mantra, hoovb, as I do my spring clean up this year!