Extra early aconite, home

It's been raining most of today, and it's been April warm with, I felt, the prospect of frogs. Hearing batrachian quacks and/or bells—the telltale voices of Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers, respectively—would have set an aural record, and with that in mind, I headed to the edges of the vernal pool in the backwoods that I've monitored for the past three decades. Happily, the frogs weren't fooled by the unnatural warmth, so, after a brief survey, I headed home, all the while searching the ground for signs of new plant growth. In the cold frame, there's lettuce. In one flower garden, the most well-established hellebore, a member of the Lenten Rose group, decided to celebrate early and was in full-bloom. Along the edge of another flower garden, I got the biggest surprise of all: one of our Winter Aconite plants—these are almost always the first to blossom—was showing yellow... about a month early. This is a flower for the record books... and maybe the start of a trend.