Best early color hostas

The hostas are emerging!  The hostas are finally emerging!  Here are my favorite hostas in my garden for spring early color.

Sagae

Fire Island

St Elmo's Fire

Montana Moonshine

Montana Aureomarginata, First Frost, and Rainbow's End

Liberty

Dancing Queen

June Fever

Wat Paint

Eskimo Pie

What's blooming this week

Bergenia

Species Tulip

Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Daffodil 'Pink Charm'

Daffodil

Double Daffodil

Bergenia

Winter Vole Damage - help

So the snow is gone, and now I can see all the trails left behind by the voles.  So far I know I have lost at least one hosta to their winter eating.  I have yet to find a foolproof way of getting rid of them.  So if anyone has some ideas I would love to hear them!  I am hoping having a dog again might keep them out.

Vole trails in one of my hosta beds.

Start of blooms in the spring garden

More signs of spring

Despite the fact that as I write this it is currently snowing once again, there are many signs that spring is here.

Bleeding Hearts starting to emerge.

Vinca blooming

Tulips coming up

Lilies coming up

Columbine

Daylilies

Hyacinth

Daffodils

Monkshood

Ice Storms and Spring

This week the Cheesehead Garden was hit with an ice storm.  We lost power for for about 11 hours but luckily there was no damage.  I did manage to get some cool shots of my crocuses encased in ice.  

Then this weekend when we surveying the damage to the trees in our yard, I happen to notice my first hosta nubs of the season!  Might be time to think about setting up the greenhouse.

Ice on crocuses

Ice on last year's brown eyed susans.

Alliums coming up.

First hosta nubs of the season.

Spring is finally here!

I was just beginning to wonder if we would ever see spring.  It amazes me how quickly flowers can bloom.  My crocuses can be covered in inches of snow one day, and the next day they are in full bloom.

It's been a while since I last posted.  The winters blues I think were in full effect.  For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook I have big news.  We now have a new addition to our family.  George is a Treeing Walker Coonhound mix.  He is from a rescue shelter and was rescued from an overrun shelter in Kentucky.  He is very sweet, loves to rip all the plant tags out of my garden, and we are hoping he is not a digger.  I hope all the voles are reading this, and are already packing their things and moving on to another yard.

Pretty soon we'll be seeing hosta noses poke out of the ground.  I am getting excited for gardening season!

George and our cat, Roxy.

George had to try to get into the picture.