Spring Has Sprung!!!!

The other day I drove around town and looked at all the things that were blooming. It was such a beautiful day and I saw so much color. But I know it's going to get even better, if we can just get past the cold weather dropping in and surprising us with another bout of twenty-something or so degrees.
Anyhow, back to my drive around town.
The first blooms I saw were the lavender-purple and ivory petals of Japanese magnolias. Then came the rosy-pinks of quince and bright yellows of forsythia. Paperwhites and jonquils in soft whites and yellows cropped up in many yards, and several shades of reddish-pink azaleas appeared among green leaves. High up, tiny multitudes of pale fushia redbuds popped out on spindly tree limbs, and in a small field groups of sunshine yellow daffodils floated back and forth like waves when the breeze blew them.
Any day now we will be able to see all over town tall pine trees ringed with huge azalea bushes that show their peach, white, pink, and magenta blossoms. And we will see thousands, I'm sure, of dogwood trees with their cream-colored and pale lime-green flowers lining streets and scattered in every yard.
Long before now, our local gardners were at work, spreading compost, working fertilizers of all sorts into their garden beds, and putting in bulbs and bushes and garden plants in every possible nook and cranny.
The rains continue to bring refreshing water to feed all these pleasures we see blooming around us, and we know that Spring has sprung!!!
Usually the middle of March is the best time for me to roam the city and check out where the most gorgeous blossoms are. I'll have my map all planned before March 15th gets here, and my camera ready. And if it's a nice sunny day, I'll have a full tank of gasoline in my car and I'll be gone sightseeing for the best of Moultrie's flowers, bushes and trees.
If you can't get out and drive around to see the colors, plan to come to the library and find one of these good garden books to look at. Or some of the gardening magazines on the reading racks. It's the next best thing to traveling around town.

• Gardening Without Work - Ruth Stout 635.9S
• Gardening Week by Week - George H. M. Lawrence 635.9L
• Gardening in the Shade - Harriet Klamroth Morse 635.9M
• Gardening from the Ground Up - Stanley Schuler 635.9S.