We Have Sprung!

Wow! Today is 77º. I'm wearing sandals, cotton capris, a short-sleeved shirt ... and I'm too warm! The sky is clear and blue, and air is calm and warm. Ahhhhh ~~ summer!! Oops, I mean spring!!

A spring post wouldn't be complete without some blooming things, so here you go:

I don't know what those white ones are, but the ones below you recognize as hyacinths, of course.

As the weather warms here in the South, we Southerners will again slow down to the pace we normally live in:

And for those who think our lives here in Oriental are the stuff of myth and legend ...

I've spotted several short trees with these blooms:

So pretty, bright white against the sky, and waxy and limp.

It has a very short growth structure. Anybody know it's name?

Many gardeners are trimming back their big grasses, but this family burned theirs. So shocking, so ugly, rather disturbing.

Yet already you see new green shoots overtaking the burnt, dead stumps.

Again, God gives us an object lesson in nature -- from the burnt, ugly parts of our lives, new growth and beauty can come. The burnt stuff becomes the rich soil from which we extract the strength and wisdom -- the nourishment -- to keep going. It takes time.

Julia's growing too. I'm glad she's not so big she can't still enjoy a good tree-climb!

I'm thinking small and manageable, regarding my "gardening" this summer. I'm a pathetic gardener, especially in Southern heat and Southern clay. I bought one patio tomato plant. Did I mention it already? Here it is in its big pot.

I was excited about its tough reputation for longevity and production, so I bought three more. Must find pots for them now.

And then I did something very silly. I had a whole packet -- a whole packet! -- of pea seeds from two years ago. They were hanging around mindlessly in the left-over bread bowl in the kitchen. Miraculous, I think, that they hadn't been thrown out already. So I put them all in a gallon ziplock baggy with a wet paper towel, and placed it in the sun to see if they would germinate.

And they did. All 42 of them. Well, I don't know exactly how many, but I feel like I have 42 vulnerable little babies, all wiggling and alive and requiring me to tend to them. I put a handful into this little pot (above), and you see how two of them are up already, heads into the sun.
I just put another 15 or so into another larger pot. Eek! What have I done? I'm gonna be overrun with peas! I should put them in the ground next to the house, in the broad sunshine, and see how they do. Things are growing here!
Happy spring! If it hasn't arrived at your home yet, I hope it does soon.
Update:
Dasha, I've added another photo of that first white flower, so you can see its growth habit. It's not a shrub, so I don't think it's a forsythia, although you're right that the blooms are similar. Here's a photo:

It grows low to the ground, like daffodils. Pretty!