We have reached the last full week of March. Today the moon is half full, next Sunday on the 28th it will be full and that will be Palm Sunday.

Easter is on April 4 this year. I would love to unload my greenhouse but we might have a cool snap around Easter and I don’t want to have to move the plants twice. It is an unusual Easter when we don’t have a cool spell and occasionally a light frost. 

Old-timey gardeners planted with moon signs and also did not put out tender vegetables until after Easter, even if it came in late April or early May.

My aunt Flora, a very good gardener, always said to plant potatoes on the dark nights of March and never plant in the sign of Pisces or the potatoes would grow little toes on them.

I saw dozens of Bradford pear trees blooming last week while riding with my son. They’re beautiful and there were so many everywhere I looked.

Lady banksia roses are starting to bloom now. This is a favorite for our area. Small clusters of little yellow roses grow along the arching stems of this thornless rose. Lady Banks can climb a pine tree and cascade from the top or be trained to a fence or trellis.

She is a Hardy Rose and is not bothered by most of the common rose problems such as black spot, whiteflies and aphids, among others.

There is also a white lady banksia rose. It is exactly the same, except the clusters of roses are white. It never seems to me, that the white one blooms as heavily as the yellow one.

Driving Bemiss Road is a sampling of plants and trees in flower. Carolina Jessamine blooms in bursts of yellow on fence rows and in pine trees, red maple trees are blooming with their multi shades of red keys, their flowers, all along ditch lines, woods lines and as ornamental specimens in yards. 

Bride’s wreath is just starting to show some of the little white flower clusters that adorn their arching branches.

Large agricultural fields that waited through the winter are now covered with yellow-flowering wild mustard, often intermixed with burgundy/rust-flowering sour grass. These massive fields of color look like a large collage and turns the landscape into a work of art.

Wisteria vines are covered in blooms that look like pussy willow blooms on willow trees. The vines are still bare of foliage and the blooms that are forming are about the size of two thumbs. They will burst into bloom soon with the large, beautiful lilac clusters of sweet pea-type flowers. When it is blooming is the only time I like wisteria, the rest of the year, I fight it.

Many quick-growing plants have shot up a foot or more over the last week and a half of warm weather. Crinum bulbs have foliage a foot and a half tall. The foliage is held straight up by the dead layers of last year’s foliage. As the plant grows the layers of old foliage will be discarded by the plant. The upright, fresh new foliage will relax and form a mound of strap-like foliage.

Some species have very relaxed foliage that touches the ground and other species have more upright foliage that does not mound on the soil.

Both types have varied types of lily-like flowers at the top of a tall bloom scape. Most of the flowers are scented, some are stronger than others. All have multiple flowers growing out of the scape, each scape blooms for a week or more as flowers mature. These large bulbs are perennial and will give decades of color. Most plants produce small bulblets where the flowers were on the scape. These can bloom in about three years if cared for.

A few late winter bulbs are lingering and still flowering. One of my favorite daffodils recently started flowering. The cultivar is “Thalia,” a beautiful exquisite pure white flower with swept-back pedals, it is often called “Angel Wings.” It is not as large as your common daffodils. A few large trumpet daffodils are still flowering, some jonquils and leucojum but they are fading in the heat and the breeze.

I have two types of Iris flowering now, white bearded iris and small white, lilac and yellow ruffled flowers of an iris sometimes called “walking iris,” but it is not the walking iris I know. The foliage of most of my species of iris is healthily growing and a few plants are already three feet tall. Probably the pseudocormus or water iris, they grow waist to shoulder tall.

Soon Mother Nature we’ll stage an extravaganza of flowers and beauty. Azaleas are just getting started and they will color the city in bright and beautiful hues. Some bushes will not even show any foliage it will be such an abundance of flower petals. These are the days that we should be outside enjoying the grandeur of nature before mosquitoes and yellow flies arrive to torment us.

I’m running out of space and want to share a couple of photos with you. See you next week.

Susan Grooms gardens and lives in Lowndes County.