Ep. 243 Looking toward spring: Our favorite spring flowers | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb , Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. Well, it is it's gonna be Ken and me, and we're gonna be spring dreaming. We're gonna be sharing some of the things that we look forward to in the spring. It's gonna be a picture heavy show.

So, if you're interested, we will have a link to the YouTube video for this down in the show notes if you're just listening to us. But you know I can't do this by myself because because Ken's supposed to be here. So we have to introduce Ken. So, obviously, here he is. So Ken Johnson in Jacksonville, welcome to the show.

Also, are a horticulture educator. I messed that whole thing up. Hi, Ken.

Hello. Yeah. This will be a should be a fun show. Hopefully, we don't get too long winded talking about our favorite things here.

Yes. I I I'm excited to kinda look back. So we this is not necessarily this spring. We are looking at past or previous spring photos that we've taken of various I don't know. I guess I have a lot of specific plants, but I do have sort of, like, a few just general landscape shots.

So these are the kind of the things that we look forward to every year that get us excited for the upcoming growing season. Right, Ken? Is that kinda a good kinda premise of what we're doing?

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's fair. Yeah. Mhmm.

Trying to look in the pictures I picked. Yeah. It's more or less almost everything blooming in my garden in the spring, but there's a few things I didn't put in there.

I I did have an insect picture. It was a ladybug eating its like pupil case, but I didn't put that in there. So I'm like, ah, Ken probably has insect pictures, but maybe you don't. Maybe it's all plants.

I stuck to plants. I didn't know I was supposed to put insects in.

Next week.

This will get very long

Our favorite spring insects next week. Yeah. We could be here all day. Actually, I was outside just the other day yesterday, because it was a beautiful day, and I had, mosquitoes already feasting on my arms. So, yeah, I it they're out there already on we're recording this March 10.

It was March 9 yesterday, so I'm already getting bit.

Yeah. So right now in in Jacksonville, it's 83 degrees on March 10. So Mhmm. It's crazy. And maybe that's one thing we should talk about before we get into the the pictures is that, again, people will be listening to this on Friday or later.

But right now, the forecast for next Monday, so that'd be the sixteenth. You see it here in Jacksonville as you get down to 13 at night with a high of in the low twenties. So Mhmm. Hopefully, you took some pictures because you may lose some of your depending on how how early stuff is budding out, you may lose some flowers. Yeah.

I know the buds are swelling on a lot of different trees outside. My daffodils are definitely growing like crazy. My tulips, the leaves are at least are up. So I'm a little bit worried because while you haven't beat in the high temperature for today, I think we're at, like, 78 right now. I'll have you beat for the low temperature at Sunday, Monday night.

It's, like, 10 degrees for us. So that's gonna be a pretty extreme swing in temperature. So, I mean, like, a lot of our tree fruits, a lot of our cultivated, maybe landscape cultivars might not be as well adapted to that. Most of our native plants are still gonna be okay in that regards.

Yeah. And usually talk about, like, we have tulips, daffodils, they can take a freeze, But I'm not sure they're gonna handle ten, thirteen degrees

Yep. All that well.

We'll have to wait and see. But don't be surprised if you've got stuff blooming. They may get nipped pretty good.

Yep. If things Take pictures.

Yeah. If if things stay the the way they're forecasted to on March 10.

Yep. Yep. Don't make us a liar, weather forecasters. You you better hold your end of the bargain here. We've we've set you up.

So so, yeah, we are on Springs Roller Coaster right now here in good old Central Illinois. I I guess it's pretty par for the course, but going from 80 to 10 is an extreme dump.

Yeah. I don't I don't know if today even qualifies as a false spring. I think this is a false summer. Exactly.

It was gross outside. I'll say that much, Ken, and use your own terminology. Oh my goodness. Well, well, let's dive right into this today. So the the way we're gonna do this is we'll we'll just divide the show in half.

Ken, we'll go first. I'll I'll go second if that's alright with you, Ken. That works. Well, why don't you, go ahead and just kick us off this week, please, on your, spring, photoshoot.

Alright. So, like Chris said, we're just gonna share some pictures. So the first one I have, I think this is more or less alphabetical order depending on how I've named my files. I've got a bleeding heart. This is one, you know, growing up we had and I've planted now as an adult.

And there's there's a couple different types. You've got like pink flowers here, there's some that have bigger blooms on them, the leaves can be different. These are more deeply cut than some of the other types. Don't know if they're different species or just different cultivars within that, but this is one they look forward to. This is, we've got it in our backyard under some maple trees.

So it's got, you know, that nice early season light on it. And then as it starts fading, that canopy starts filling in and then we'll we'll go away. But that's the one I look forward to every year. If you want a kind of a similar similar looking plant that's native, Dutchman's breeches. Just once again, again, if you're watching this, the foliage looks somewhat similar.

Again, kind of nice and deep cuts, on there. The flowers are white, again, similar similarish shape, but they look like pants, thus the Dutchman's Breeches name. So this is yet another spring ephemeral, so it's popping up, and then we'll die back as again as we start getting canopy closure on our inner landscape and stuff. Another one I got here, Columbine, so this is blooming a little bit later, than maybe some of these others. And if you've never grown Columbine, it will, readily self seed.

So we started off with one or two plants and now we have a nice big patch that's probably 10 feet long and four or five feet wide, that's almost solid columbine now. And it's popping up elsewhere in the yard and I don't mind and it's pretty easy to pull if it does pop up. It's, don't really, I wouldn't really consider it problematic because it is relatively easy to manage, at least when it's small, when it gets pretty big, can get a little more difficult to pull. Now we've got I've kinda got this I don't know if this is a straight species, but the red and yellow flowers, there are ones that have purple flowers, different, cultivars that have been bred. Some have the the giant flower, just double flowers, all kinds of variation out there when it comes to, columbine.

And you really got this, can kind of see on some of these, you got some, I guess you have pseudo insect pictures here. Looks like I had some aphids on here, all the white skins left on some of the blooms, but you know, not, didn't really hurt the plants. They're still looking pretty healthy. Leaf miner is something that can pop up. You can of see in some of the background of these pictures.

Makes the leaves look a little unsightly, but I've never had to the point where it's, you know, doing significant damage to the plants. And if you get that, you can pull off those leaves and have the, it's a fly. The fly is in between the upper and lower leaf surfaces. You can imagine how small that fly is, but it's just going through tunneling, eating, leaving kind of these clear paths behind because it's eaten all the leaf tissues in there. And here's a picture kind of that flower kind of turned up a little bit so you can actually see because their flowers kind of face down towards the ground, but that's what the and the inside of the flower looks like.

And they've got these, you know, these big spurs on here, which is the nectar is in. So hummingbirds are showing up when these are out there, they do like feeding on these, they'll see them flying around on these. The other one we just did a whole show on this, so we'll keep crocus short, but we got crocus. So yeah, this is another one. You know, admirer probably one of the first that's blooming right now and I think I think I've got much else of anything blooming.

So crocus is kind of the first thing, at least in my yard. I don't remember what species we got here, and I didn't take the time to look that up before the show. But one of the yellow cultivars here, and you see on this one, this is one where the outer petals have that purplish markings on the outside of it. So when they're when they're not fully open, you can see that a little better like in this picture. Some more of those.

And then some of the purple ones. I think these are the Tommy's. Just kinda compare comparison pictures or maybe it could be different. I'm not again, I'm not entirely sure against some of the purplish ones here. Another one of our favorites are daffodils.

So these again, I have no idea what these daffodils are. Lot these are dug from my grandparents' house when we sold that. So but they're probably like probably gonna this this picture's from a couple years ago. I'm probably gonna have to divide these because they're getting pretty crowded. I've done that a few times with a couple patches and basically, I think, doubled the amount of daffodils I have because I'll send off new new bulbs and and stuff and they can be quite fragrant too depending on what cultivar you have.

And there's I've got yellow ones, there's ones that have white petals and yellow trumpet area and vice versa, there's all white. So there's a lot of different color variations. There's different times a year that they'll bloom. So you can have, like, different you probably if you if you picked your cultivars, right, you could probably have a month, maybe more of of continuous daffodil bloom if you're picking them based on kind of their bloom time. So very, again, various colors, sizes, there's some that have the double so that the middle is all ruffled and stuff.

So again, a lot of variation with daffodils out there. So there's probably a daffodil for everybody out there. Indeed. Yep. And the critters leave them alone.

At least in my heart.

Yes. They're somewhat toxic and poisonous to everyone.

Yes. So don't eat them.

Yep. Don't eat them.

Next, I got peonies probably picking your favorite plants, picking your favorite kid. It maybe just depends on the day, but peonies are definitely up there for me. So here we've got one of the flower buds and you can see some of these droplets on there. This is the, so the the buds have those extra floral nectar, so they release nectar, which will draw in ants. And ants, a lot of people think ants, peonies need ants to bloom, but the ants are just there feeding on the nectar.

And when they're doing that, they'll defend that flower from other insects that may wanna come by and feed on it. So they don't help it open, but they do protect that flower, from potential pests. So again, I think it's kind of fun to watch them. I may be in the minority there. And then again, like a lot of other these are ornamental cultivated plants, peonies, can find them all different colors, shapes, sizes.

This is one it's actually it's not in my yard. This is one in a community garden. It was in Peoria that they had. I have no idea what kind it is. I need to find out because it's I think it's really pretty.

Most of what I have is white or pink in my yard. I dug these from my grandparents' house when we sold it. So some of these plants are probably forty, fifty years old. So, yeah, look forward to them every year. Nice smelling.

They do tend to flop. I'll I need to get some peony cages on them because they will, they look great and then we get a rain or it gets a little windy and they'll flop over and stuff, so. We've got spring beauty. So this is one, you know, I've got a few plants in my area, but we did a a video that we can link to, here in Jacksonville. We've got Duncan Park.

The entire park is at least good chunk of the park is white in the spring when they start blooming. I can see white flowers with these pink stripe, on the petals. And depending on they they can be almost all white or they can be almost all pink. There's there's just that that variation within the population that you have out there. But you got a nice spring ephemeral.

You can see the pictures that the leaves are kind of grass like, so it blends in well with lawns, especially if you can hold off blooming or hold off mowing a little bit. So you're letting the again, letting those leaves photosynthesize, send those energy send the energy back into the the bulbs, corms. I don't remember what they grow from. So you can get, you know, good blooming the next year. And this is one that needs that double dormancy, so it needs to go through a warm moist and a cold moist stratification before it will bloom.

So if you if you were to get some seed this spring and plant them, they're not going to germinate until next year. So if if you wanna grow these and you're growing from c a k, it's gonna take you a little time before you get flowers off there. But if you can buy the the bulbs, a little more instant gratification, if you grow them that way.

I'll I'll say, Ken, that was one of my favorite spring days when we came to visit you and and visited that park that was just covered in Spring Beauties.

Yeah. You kinda wanna roll around in it.

You do. I did.

Gotta be careful though because people walk their dogs there, you know. Pets. Only bed dogs. So another one, we don't have as many tulips as we used. So we planted a bunch of tulips.

I guess this would have been COVID time like '20 fall twenty twenty, so they're blooming 2021. And now in 2026, most of them have have kind of faded and disappeared. It's and it was just I I think a lot of the more modern tulips, they just do not last for years and years and years like some of the older types do. Because we would let these leave the leaves until they yellow on their own, but just over time, they've kind of faded. I think we've only got maybe one or two, cultivars left last year.

We'll we'll see what this year brings. But this one here, this is Annalita early. So this is what it looks like early in the season when it first starts blooming, and then it kind of fades into this pinkish color. So this was a cool one. I think this may have been one of the shorter lived ones that we had.

Again, kind of cool. And we haven't replanted just because I don't want to have to plant bulbs every year. So we've just kind of let them go and filled in that space with other things. So this is Negrita. Is this this a nice purple one of the adam.

We were planting these, we kind of planted it in a rainbow. So we had red, orange, yellow, kind of greenish blue and purple all in a row. We're trying to mimic a rainbow and then white on either end like it was clouds. I don't know how well we pulled it off, but that was our our goal there on that. This is princess Irene.

So, again, orange one against some purple, some of those outer petals on the outside of them. This one is probably my my favorite. This is World Peace. So again, an orange and yellow. You know, nice nice bright colors on there.

And here's kind of what we had planted and around either side of our our walk. But I think it's from memory, I think early pieces about the only one we have left. And there's not very not nearly many of those left as we had planted. But it was it was pretty for a couple of years. So depending on how you feel about this plant, you may be screaming at your screen right now.

But our common blue violet, you know, I I let this grow in my yard. So it looks very pretty in the spring. So we got purple, we've got white ones, which for some reason I haven't taken pictures of. We've got the purple and white ones. We've got all the different colors of of common violet in our backyard.

So again, early early in the spring, relatively May, April timeframe, we've got a lot of color in our yards. I know a lot it's not necessarily most popular plant, especially in lawns, but it does provide some nice early season color, in my opinion.

It does. I I also my lawn is also full of violets, and I also let it move as a ground cover through the landscape beds too. So I think that would probably drive a lot of people crazy to have just, like, a ground cover of violet over the shrub beds, but it doesn't bother me. I think I got a picture of because one shrub bed is covered in white violets. Maybe I can throw that in.

Yeah. And we've let it get into our some of our landscape beds a little bit, but when it starts choking out other things, we'll I'll go through it. And I think it's relatively easy, especially in a garden bed to pull. It comes out in pretty nice clumps. So

Let it choke things out. That's fine. That's just yeah.

But I paid money for those planes.

The violet is saying that to you, I'm free. I'm here.

Yeah. And I will say that I'll say my mom's house, they had a my mom had let some violet start growing and actually choked out, lily of the valley. Yes. Which I found kind of surprising. Had It doesn't bloom a whole lot because it's pretty deep shade, but Mhmm.

It's got a whole whole bed that's nothing but violets now.

Well, to be continued because I got a low Leo Valley picture coming up.

So I got two more years ago. Virginia bluebell. So again, it's another one spring ephemeral. So it's got, again, these these flowers start purple and they'll kind of fade to, I guess, blue. That's about as blue as you're going to get in the botanical.

Yeah. The nice bluish color. Again, it it'll it's spring and summer, so it will die back again as it as the season goes on as we start getting into summer. I should have these pictures switched, but this is what it looks like, you know, it's first starting to come up. I got these nice pink flower budges that are starting to emerge from the ground.

And then when they when they fully open again, you get multiple colors on that flower stock as as those flowers are in various stages of development. And this is the one we planted in our backyard as well. It's and it's slowly spreading. There are patches expanding. So again, not upset about that one.

And then final one here, I look forward to is the wild ginger. Again, this one can be maybe a tad more aggressive than some people may want as a ground cover depending on what you're going for here. But again, it's got these nice kind of heart shaped leaves or hairy kind of fuzzy looking, and they are fuzzy too. And the flowers, unless you're really looking for them, you may not notice some, but they're underneath the canopy. They're kind of this purplish color here.

Yeah. So unless you're looking for them, you don't usually see them, but I think they're pretty cool looking.

So Somebody has a sweet gum tree nearby.

Yes. It's the neighbor in the backyard. I guess I'm not I guess it's all in there, probably. Yeah. We have we have gumball mulch back there in many places, and I just

It's the best.

It is. It's slow to break down. I don't have to replace it very often. Mhmm. If you let, you know, get a little old, you can walk on a barefoot.

I walk on a barefoot all the time.

Yeah. Not a problem. Yep. Now do you think those flowers are fly pollinated because of the color? Or could we not we can't tell based on this.

We'd have to do more digging probably.

Let's just say fly. I've heard maybe ant pollinated because we're so close to that. We had to have to look for for certain. They usually when you gotta get these darker colored flowers like this is purplish maroon, a lot of times that is a a fly pollinated. I've never smelled these.

I'm not sure what the smell is like, the but smell can be a pretty good indicator. If it's a, should we say, less than pleasant smell, a lot of times that's fly pollinated because it's mimicking dead animals or droppings. See, and there's there's others we've got in our yard, but I limited myself and some of these are pictures of golden Alexander's another, native one that's this is gonna be in full sun. That does pretty good if you're looking on on the native side as well.

Well, that was a great set of pictures, Ken. I think I will borrow a lot of of what you have just said. So we do have a couple kinda reoccurring things here. This particular daffodil, as I kick off my round of pictures, is there's a story behind it. So actually, this picture was taken in 2007, and this daffodil came from the Missouri Botanical Garden.

When I was an intern there in the 2006, they every year, I think it's every year, they'll dig up their bulb gardens, a lot of their daffodils, some of their tulips, really any of the spring bulbs that can be divided out sort of after all the foliage has faded in the middle to late summer. They'll dig them up, divide them, plant half of them back in the garden, and the other half they will go to their annual sale. This was a leftover from the sale, and the the horticulturist there at the time, Jason, he said, oh, this is a really valuable daffodil bulb. It's very expensive. You know?

Probably, you know, $1,200 or something. And I believed him. I think it's just plain old daffodil. I think I think that's all it is. I think he was pulling my leg.

So I guess if anybody recognizes this and says, oh, no. That's a that's a priceless daffodil that you have. I still have it. It's planted at at my folks' place. So and it still looks about the same.

So I I do think this particular one is fragrant, though. So maybe that's some value for this daffodil. So anyway, yes, daffodils love seeing these. It's a great harbinger of spring. And I also am going to talk about Dutchman's Breeches because maybe one of my favorite springtime activities is going on a walk through the woods.

So where I grew up, we have about 20 acres of timber that I would just pretty much walk through every day after school. I would spend a lot of my days as a child out there. And springtime is one of my favorite times to be out in the woods. So Dutchman Breeches here, you know, similar flower shape as Ken showed us, but let's go through a walk through the woods. This is a few springs ago.

Look at all of the just hillsides covered in these blooms. This my favorite time of year to be walking through. Dutchman's Breeches is not necessarily the only one. So we do have mayapples also poking up in through the leaf litter here on the woodland floor. And amongst all these, spring, Dutchman's breeches.

And just sometimes the light coming over the hill hits it just right, and you get these really amazing sparkling white colors off of these. So it's just really fun to sort of kind of play around with with lighting and the time of day with your photos and just it's one of my favorite places to be at in my folks' property. So again, this is just me playing with different lighting, different angles, just kind of trying to catch a different color off of that. But you can see kind of off into the distance, these Dutchman's Breeches just stretch on and on. We also have Trilliums growing and poking up through the leaf litter there on the forest floor.

And so there's these and then many others. I think I found like a buckeye one year just out in the middle of the woods. No other no other buckeyes nearby. I have no idea where it would have come from. But I found that out there also in the spring.

Now this isn't my yard, but this next picture here, boy, this is like a gold. Right, Ken? Like a life gold. Look at all of this. This is just in someone's backyard.

It backs up to a golf course. We've got may apple, trilliums. We've got spring beauty. I mean, there's just a ton of spring ephemerals in this little woodland garden. So, yeah, this is this is a goal for me.

I I this is what I want someday.

Jack in the pulpit in the middle.

Oh, Jack in the pulpit. Yes. Yes. Jack in the pulpit. Yeah.

Look at that. Just think, Ken, just a few years that could be in your yard. Maybe. That's the goal. Yeah.

I I mean, the trees around here look a little bit older. Maybe I I I doubt it. I'm pretty sure this area was regraded pretty heavily, but what if this was left behind from, like, the development process? I I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I also really love lilacs.

Lilacs have been in my yard whether I've been renting or owning a home for decades now. So there's always been a wonderful part of spring. So these are pictured here are lilac blooms in our former house. They're they're still tightly closed. They haven't opened yet, but they're about to.

And then the next day, it does this. So it starts snowing, and this is a typical spring year. We've already talked about how the weather shifts like crazy here in Illinois in the Midwest. So, you know, now this next picture is showing snowflakes and snow all over these about to open lilac blooms and they were fine. They opened up just fine a few days after it warmed up.

So but this might be one of my favorite pictures of spring. So here we have a crabapple in the background. It's in full bloom. We have a there's a gray dogwood sort of in the mid ground, foreground. The grass is bright green, and there's snow.

It's snowing when I took this picture. Snow is covering all of the ground that does not have any canopy over it. So it's just a really I just love the kind of the the contrast of snow covered crabapple blooms and then this bright green lawn underneath of it. It's just like, wow. I I just love that that this was a a really neat moment, I think.

I I just love when the weather does stuff like this.

And those those grasses really pop too. The the dry Oh,

The ornamentals. Yep. Those that I thought might have been the year I never pruned them down. It's like, I I didn't own any kind of thing to cut them down with except for like a scissors or a knife, and I'm just like, I just let them go. And they were fine.

I just cut them the next

year for a match.

That's true. I did burn one year. I almost got in trouble for that one. Almost. I have to include this saucer magnolia in here.

It's my wife's favorite plant in our yard. She yells at any child that tries to climb it. I I I really like magnolias too. And this is just off of our back patio deck area. And I mean, it wouldn't be spring without this thing going in full bloom.

Fingers crossed the flower buds do okay because they're definitely they've shed sort of the flower buds at this point have shed those, like, outer scales, I'll say. And I hope the hard freeze doesn't hurt them too much this weekend. And, again, kind of just taking pictures of those magnolia flowers. You know, sometimes I like to put be like behind and maybe underneath the tree a little bit to get a different sort of angle on the way that sunlight comes through the petals. I just like kind of different positions, get different angles on flowers.

I highly recommend that to folks. Go, like, lay on the ground and look up through a flowering tree. It looks totally different. It's kinda neat. Just be careful where you lay.

Keep your mouth closed.

There you go. Yes. There's a lot of things that fall out of trees too. I also will include my Virginia bluebells in here as as a favorite of mine. They I like them more than the magnolia, I will say.

So on one side of the the patio, we have the magnolia. On the opposite, we have these Virginia bluebells. So I love them. And there you can see in the background coming up is oh, my mind just went totally stone cold blank. We talked about them.

The violets outgrew them. What is the name of that plant, Ken?

Lily of the Valley. Lily of

the Valley. Yes. Thank you. So we I did not plant it, but Lily of the Valley is there. So I'm just gonna maybe encourage some violets to head in that direction, and we'll see what happens.

But I the Lily of the Valley, it it currently competes with the at this point, there, the Virginia Blue Bells. We have some hostas, some ground cover hostas that are also in that spot. So now I just need violets in the party, and it's gonna be great. I I only have one of these. I wish I had more.

This is Tiarella chordifolia foam flower. It has this interesting leaf pattern, so the outer edges of the leaf are kinda bright green, almost lime green when they first emerge. And the inner or the heart of this leaf is a really dark maroon color. And then it has these, like, beautiful flower stalks or spikes that I find all kinds of insects seem to be attracted to these particular flowers. And so it's sitting right in front in the front part of my house.

I always love when it's in bloom, so it is a favorite of mine. And then right next to it is Pulmonary saccharita or Bethlehem sage, also known as lungwort, has these green leaves with this white speckling all over it. I think the Saccharita, Pulmonary Saccharita, is kind of like sugar on the foliage there. And then it has these beautiful blue purple flowers that again, I only have one. I want more.

I just never have enough money when I go to the store to get these things. I can only afford to buy one. So I'll and it doesn't necessarily divide quickly, so I just have to go get more someday. Oh, I can't wait for the blueberries to start blooming. So that this is another fun part of spring when I start seeing the blueberries begin their flower show.

See a lot of bumblebees come visit these. And the bumblebees, they like to cheat and not pollinate these flowers and they'll chew a hole in the side, get their next reward or pollen and leave without going the official route through the opening of the flower. I do love it when my blueberries are in bloom. Right now they're like bright red stems. It's so neat.

That's my giant rhubarb. That's it just starting to emerge. And I I it's a giant rhubarb. It's very happy. I don't know what else to say about it other than it's gigantic.

I think it's just a straight old fashioned heirloom type rhubarb. I don't it's no particular cultivar that I know of. There's my world peace tulips. Ken talked me into it, and I love the color combination with my Virginia bluebells. So they're still popping up here and there, but Ken's right.

They do begin to diminish over time. But they've held on for many years. So even though I'm I'm losing some here and there, I still get a couple still coming up even after, I think, four three or four years now. Oh, and then I I just love it when ferns come up and do this. These are just the fiddleheads of emerging ferns that I planted in sort of the sort of wet part area in in my bed that's very shaded.

They do very well, and I miss them. I can't wait for them to come back up. Maybe this podcast should be about like, oh, I miss these plants. I can't wait to see them again. Bleeding heart is another really fun one for me to see.

This picture right here actually just shows a leaf that's been cut, and it shows that orange red sap right there on the end. That bleeding heart. What am I trying to say? Blood root. Yes.

Yes. Basically a medical emergency plant, whatever type of plant, whether your heart's bleeding or your roots are bleeding. So yes, bloodroot. Sorry. Just a favorite one of mine, another spring one.

So Ken oh, go ahead.

I said we had planted some of that and it disappeared. Don't if somebody ate it or we just didn't have it in a good spot. Listen, I do like that one too. It's about the white the white flowers and stuff. That's a pretty plant.

I need to plant some more of that.

It's it's the whitest flower I've ever seen. I don't know how it's even possible. How like, the the brilliance of that color. It's crazy or all of the colors there. And, Ken, these next couple pictures are mostly peonies.

There is a river of Siberian iris through these peonies right here, but this is not my yard. I wish it was, but it's not. So this is actually at the Illinois Veterans Home in Quincy, Illinois. It's a master gardener project that's it's outside of my territory, so I do come down here, though, and I volunteer in this area. My mom, who's a master gardener, she works at this garden.

And springtime is worth a visit. It's it's a public garden. It's open to everyone, so anyone is welcome to visit. But it just a ton of peonies and a ton of color. So just to kind of give a little bit of description, we have this purple Siberian Irish River down the middle of flank flanking flanked by two rows of pink peonies, double flowered for the most part, I think.

So we have here's the double flower, just that brilliant, frilly, fluffy thing. And it smells amazing when you're walking through here. So there's a couple different types of peonies, of course. We do have some some white ones as well, red ones, I think, as well. But I just love how they have this river of Siberian iris and then the the peonies on either side of it.

It just looks it's just spectacular. Again, more peony pictures. There's there's just all different types, colors, and it's just a favorite of mine. So I highly recommend folks give it a visit in the spring, summer, or even fall. So I always look forward to getting out there and checking things out and get a little volunteer work done.

So well, Ken, that's it. That's springtime. That's what we're looking forward to. That's what we're missing. And I it'll be here be here before we know it.

Or, again, in some cases, it's already showing up.

Yes. That's true. Exactly.

I think my daffodils are getting pretty close to they look a little closer, but I think I've seen some some flower stocks coming up on them. So

Yeah. I I think so too. And and, again, I got, you know, I got pictures of daffodils with snow on them, but it wasn't 10 degrees. It was, like, 28 degrees and snowing. You know?

So that 10 degrees gonna be interesting. So we'll see what happens.

Next week may be a sad show. Gonna be here crying.

This is why we're we're enjoying these pictures right now. Well, that was a lot of great information or maybe a a great journey through, you know, our spring landscape, the things that that that happen in our yard that we look forward to every year. So I guess if you have things, viewers, listeners, that you look forward to, let us know. I'm happy to happy to read or hear more about what other people look forward to in their spring landscape. Well, the Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth.

Ken, thanks for putting together a little photo album and hanging out and listening to me, my photo album. I feel like we were just like two people with the old slideshow clicker. Alright, everyone gather around. We're gonna look at pictures of our, you know, trip to Florida. Yeah.

But thank you, Ken, for for everything today. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. Going through pictures. Yeah. Definitely got me pumped for for what's to come.

So hopefully, it if there's well, or the maybe the forecast will improve a little bit and won't be quite as cold. We'll see.

Yes. Yes. And we could use a little bit more spring and less summer. Yeah. So quickly.

And let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. Bring the tissues as we cry over our frozen plants. No. It won't be that bad. Things will be fine.

Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening. Or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.

University of Illinois Extension.

This is weird. I don't have an outline today. Oh my gosh. My screen has just zoom. It's just you up here, Ken.

It's all I can see.

Make sure we don't get too rambly today.

I guess so. Alright.

No guardrails. That's true.

We we have no beginning, middle, and endpoint. Alright. Well, it can't be as long as a Crocus show. We just gotta say that say that much.