Spring Impends

Here are some pictures from my yard this morning:

First, Butter and Eggs Daffodil:

Paeonia lutea var. ludlowii:

Daphne genkwa, now in bloom:

Clematis armandii 'Apple Blossom':

Santa Rosa plum:

 Helleborus orientalis:

Heuchera maxima:

Santa Rosa plum, close-up of the future plums:

Camellia japonica:

Clematis armandii 'Apple Blossom':

Abelia 'Edward Goucher':

Berberis darwinii:

Oranje Boven Hyacinth:  I bought this somewhat randomly last fall, a hyacinth that is no longer commercially available, but preserved by heirloom growers.  As it was popping up from the ground earlier this month, I was reading Your California Garden and Mine by Sydney B. Mitchell, the president of the California Horticultural Society in the 1930s and 40s.  He lived in the Berkeley Hills and wrote about the challenges of gardening in California after having grown up in Montreal.  In his discussion of hyacinths, I was surprised to come across this passage:

Had I a few more lives I might possibly devote one to crashing all the Dutch ideals and try to raise a race of hyacinths with the lightness and grace of youth. There exists once such, the rather infrequently seen Oranje Boven, "orange-salmon, loosely arranged, very elegant spikes (small bulb)"--I quote from Van Tubergen's catalog--and it is my favorite of all Dutch hyacinths.