March 25

Finally, the Pacific Chorus Frogs are chirping. The swallows are back– which means the insects are back. The swallows dip and swoop in big loops over the lake surface. The Northwestern Salamanders have laid their eggs along the lakeshore. I haven’t actually seen any salamanders yet this year, though I have found a few sluggish newts hunkered down underneath flats of Fringecup (Tellima grandiflora).

The Lily-family plants are poking above the ground: Western Trillium (Trillium ovatum), Large-Flower Fairy Bells (Prosartes smithii),Star-Flowered False Solomon’s Seal (Maianthemum stellata) , Tiger (or Columbia) Lilies (Lilium columbianum) AND White Fawn Lilies (Erythronium oregonum)! Many of the White Fawn Lilies will be blooming shortly. These diminutive showoffs have nodding flowers with pointed petals that curve back. They will be in their full glory shortly, and after their blooms wither and they set seed (and they will probably seed themselves in your garden) their foliage will also die back to nothing by summer. White Fawn Lilies thrive in bright shade, although we have a patch doing well in deep shade under a spruce tree in our yard.

Fern fronds are unfurling as the days lengthen and the temperature creeps up. The Deer Ferns (Blechnum spicant) in the greenhouse are just beginning to develop new fronds. They still have their evergreen foliage from last year, but aren’t quite mature enough to have developed the vertical spore-bearing fronds that makes Deer Fern such a striking plant. They like moist shady areas best.

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