First crocus, home

My shadow, a.k.a., my granddaughter Stasia, and I had spent part of the afternoon hiking... of course... and when we returned home, I thought, given how warm it had been, we should do a flower patrol. I was pretty certain that the early spring weather—the Groundhog seems to have been right, after all—would have induced the Lenten Roses to open wide, and Stasia found those pretty blossoms quite amazing. But what we both found even more remarkable, given that it's still February, was that the hellebores and the Winter Aconites, now blooming in profusion, were no longer the only floral show on the ridge. The first of the crocuses had emerged in the past 24 hours, and there were at least two dozen little blossoms poking their petals above the leaf litter. This is record-breaking early, and given the fat buds on the primroses and the daffodils, there are additional earliness records to be established in short order.