No daffodils are blooming here in my Montgomery County, Maryland, USA garden today, but a friend reports the blooming of one of the little white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils in his garden. Snowdrops of one sort or another have been blooming off and on since November, but these have been scattered blooms and nothing to get excited about. Right now a group of several dozen of the monostictus sort are finishing up. A week ago some weather beaten blooms of Crocus laevigatus were to be seen, but they're gone now. The real stars of the season are Iris unguicularis and its forms. These have also been blooming since November, and right now one plant has a nice bouquet of five or six blooms. Also in bloom is the small form known as Iris cretensis: for me this is the big thrill in the garden now. These irises all are grown in a cold frame so perhaps they don't count as plants blooming in the garden, but the cold frame makes a huge difference in their performance here. Also in the same cold frame blooming now are two of the German Helleborus niger cultivars, 'Jacob' and 'Josef Lemper'. Again, the plants don't need the cold frame, but the frame protects the flowers very well. The same friend who has the hoop petticoat daffodils in bloom recently acquired a plant of the Helleborus niger cultivar 'Joshua', and he speaks well of it. Otherwise, the garden is very quiet, a result no doubt of the very dull and grim late fall and early winter we are experiencing. For me, a sunny, windless day with temperatures in the 40s F is perfect gardening weather. But lately over and over we have been getting days which are sunless, wet and windy: and I stay inside reading. I took a tour of the garden yesterday to see what was happening, and there is little to report. A few witch hazel flowers hang on (these are probably the native H. virginiana, but they are bigger than any plant in the local woodlands; it's the plant on which my 'Feuerzauber' is grafted). Elaeagnus pungens has a few nearly invisible blooms, but the scent which was so wonderful earlier is not apparent. From a distance, one of the sasanqua camellias seemed to be in bloom, but close up I discovered only freeze-dried blooms. One of the more colorful things in the garden now is Rohdea japonica - its clusters of fruits are very nice now. Twenty years ago those of us who knew about this plant assumed it was tender; now we know better and don't hesitate to use it freely in the open, utterly unprotected garden.So that's it for now here, and with temperatures predicted to drop over the next few days, I doubt that I'll have anything new to report from the open garden anytime soon. Jim McKenneyMontgomery County Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7, where the temperature is already over 50 degrees F and might reach 60 later today. _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/