This is a bizarre week – outdoors the sunshine and the temperatures are more like late June than the first week of May and we are already watering less than drought tolerant plants in the garden.  Right on time though, the Devil’s spawn dandelions are springing up all over the lawn and claiming hours of time that should be spent elsewhere – I mean why dod the good lord create dandelions?  What is their purpose?  Did manage to get the waterfall pump installed and running in the pond, however and birds are already bathing in the header pool it creates.

Meanwhile, up in the arboretum the spring forest flowers are showing well in all this sunshine. I recall when gardening in England that trilliums were an expensive rarity that were renowned for their difficulty and general opposition to flowering at all whereas here they just pop out of the ground.  Lovely things.

I have some photographs of these below as well as some pictures of a Great Horned Owl sitting on her nest.  In a few days she will be almost impossible to see as the leaves unfurl around here but today she was showing well.  Once her young are ready to leave the nest it may be necessary to close the forest trail she rather foolishly decided to place her nest adjacent to because the young will end up on the ground and thereby become of interest to uncontrolled dogs who will in turn to of interest to the mother owl … and she has a formidable armoury.  The dogs would lose but not necessarily before doing some damage. The flowers are a lot easier to photograph though the Trout Lilies and the Red Trilliums (though not the whites) have a propensity to turn their heads to the ground making it a knee-damaging task to get good pictures.

Anyway – some pictures.  As usual click on the thumbnails for a quality view.