Signs of Life, It is Indeed Spring! | Tulips, Evergreens, and Assorted Sprouts

Despite the fact that one day it is below freezing, and then the next day warm enough for a t-shirt, some plants outside are beginning to show themselves. The tulips have been slowly sprouting for a few weeks now, and nothing has been able to stop them yet. Not snow, rain, wind, or temperature.

They provide a nice range of colors before the garden is ready for the standard annuals and perennials. What we do is have these sprout and flower early in the season, and once they are done, we buy flats of flowers to plant. Some of these flowers do seed themselves for the next year, but Michigan is just too cold for most of them to be perennials.

One major thing that I like about bulbs are the fact that they don't need replanting each season. The annuals we buy have to be purchased and replanted every year, but these tulips come back over and over again. This ends up providing a much more worry free experience.

It would be nice to have the the tulips come up, have some standard perennials come up, and then some late season flowers to finish off the gardening season. This way the whole garden would be filled with plants that come back each year. They would just need the standard care, and any over-wintering care.

All of the empty shells and nuts are from our bird and squirrel feeder that is above on the tree. It is impossible to keep the left overs cleaned up.

This must be one of the larger bulbs that grew a few baby tulips.


I have ended up with a couple fancy leaf tulips. I am pretty sure this is one of them. We also had some that had ruffled flowers, and multiple colored flowers.

This one is a different type of bulb. I am thinking they are some sort of allium. I have different ones planted so it is hard to tell right now.

I don't know if this is a flower we have planted or not. Either way, it is still some green life within the still gray outdoors.

I know this one is a wild growing plant, but once again, it is some sign of life.

I've had this Arborvitae evergreen for a few years now, and it has over doubled in size.

Boxelder bugs are beginning to come out. I love insects, and I keep many of them, but these become a nuisance. They stay on the side of the house, and cause the siding to get stained. They belong in the true insects group. This means that they go from egg to nymph to adult, and the nymph just keeps shedding to grow in size until it is adult size. Then it sheds one last time to gain the adult features.