Spring-like behavior detected

Lately it seems every time I have a moment to go out in the garden, it's raining. By the same token, the sun comes out when I'm sitting behind my computer at work. So I had some visual catching up to do this afternoon as I wandered around the garden. Let me share some of what I saw.

Candles springing up on the lodgepole pines (pinus contorta).

Spring-green (duh!) new growth on the kinnick-kinnick (arctostaphylos uva-ursi.)

Our dogwood (cornus x 'Eddie's White Wonder') beginning to bloom. The blossoms are a gorgeous pale green, but as they open, they will turn pure white.

Parthenocissus tricuspidata is starting out reddish, but will turn deep green by summer.

The evergreen huckleberries (vaccinium ovatum) have lots of beautiful, red, new leaves...

... and lots of pretty flowers on their second-year wood.

One mahonia nervosa has a few new branches, also in seasonable spring-green.

Our pyracantha 'Mohave' has been in the garden for three years now. It's to the top of the fence and looking robust.

That pyracantha was such a success (unlike multiple other "privacy" plants that died over the past two winters) that I put in three more Mohave along the fence a month ago. I'm determined to get some year-round screening. Although they'll take some time to reach the stature of our big pyracantha, the three are looking perky this spring.

Grace, over at Gardening with Grace, posted this week about her crabapple. My image of our young malus 'Prairifire' can't rival her gorgeous pictures (take a look!), but I have been thrilled by the intense, dark pink flower/foliage combination out our dining room window. We planted Prairifire to screen us from the big house across the street, and it's already doing the job of stopping the eye in the most beautiful way.