I’m crediting this, photographed late in the day on March 4, as the first bloom of the year. It looked even better a day later.
Yes, this is my start of spring.
Nope, even with this crazy mild winter it’s not the earliest bloom; we’ve had the odd years where it’s been March 1 or 2. Last year was about 5 days later than this — and I thought that was on the earlier side! It had often been mid-March. A sign of climate change or is it just more established and therefore more robust plants?
Btw, here’s just how mild winter was around here, according to the National Weather Service:
I know I can’t compete with a neighbor with an open south-facing piece of land who already has a couple dozen daffodils in bloom. But we should have a dozen more in bloom by the end of the week. Give it another week and I’m thinking both the front yard and a flower bed in the back yard will start to look spectacular.
As long as we don’t get day after day of temperatures in the 70s, I’m hoping for 6 weeks or so of early daffodils followed by middle and then late-blooming ones.
And of course I’m already spotting clumps that I want to divide as soon as the blooms fade so I don’t forget where they are — and can see where there is space to sneak in a few and start a fresh grouping. I’ve decided that those ever- growing clumps are a sign of how happy these daffodils must be in our leaf-mulched but otherwise never fertilized soil!
Alliums to Zinnias: A journey of two New Jersey gardeners 
It’s very warm here, too. More than a month of sunny weather, which has led to a historic drought. I passed a dam where the water usually would be extremely high, but the chutes were standing far above the surface.