Spring! (sort of)
Yesterday the Crocus decided to emerge. They were promptly eaten by some pest; I suspect squirrels or rabbits. Also noticed the daffodils and tulips putting up some leaves. It was nice to have this weekend to pretend it was Spring, but we're not there yet.
It's hard to imagine that just a couple weeks ago, the Walhonding River looked like this:
I estimated the ice to be 8 to 10 inches thick there, pretty thick for a fairly fast moving river that doesn't frequently freeze over completely.
It also looks like my bog garden survived the winter:
I didn't even mulch it with pine needles and everything is turning up green. Even some exposed rhizomes were white and plump. I was actually surprised to see that my outdoor Venus's flytrap pulled through OK -- it's native to North and South Carolina and I've not heard many reports of it faring very well during a zone 5 or 6 winter.
Since it was so nice out yesterday, we also decided to take a stroll around town and walked past the old school:
It should be considered a crime to leave this poor building in this condition. It's a beautiful old building in the center of a hill-top neighborhood on the northern side of town. The school district abandoned it for a "modern" school building on the edge of town. They've done this with a couple elementary schools, too, vacating nice buildings in small neighborhoods with sidewalks where the kids could walk to school in favor of new crap-style architecture and building design on the edge of town where kids need to be bussed in. It's a shame. The old middle school above was abandoned, I believe, in the 1990s and was sold several times, ending up slated to be renovated into senior housing. After a fire or two and a lot of vandalism, I see no future for this building except for the eventual rubble heap.
And lastly, a quick report on my Drosera regia:
I got this about a year ago from Bob Ziemer, a generous fellow out in California who has never sold a single plant. I wasn't sure I could keep it alive, but I found that regularly feeding it a soupy mix of water and blood worms on the leaves sends it into a growth frenzy. It's neat watching the leaves curl around the prey slowly, trying to reach every available surface. I've posted a larger version of this image here so you can check out the macro surface of the leaves.
