Spring! Spring?

So Minnesota has decided it doesn't remember what season are anymore and, despite the few days of gorgeous, spring-like weather we had last weekend, yesterday brought almost a foot of snow to the southern part of the state. Thankfully, the Twin Cities didn't get any and instead get to enjoy chilly, cold, gray weather. I'm sure all the plants that got excited and sprouted during the warm weather are rather confused by this point. Frankly, I am as well. Last year, we had daffodils by the beginning of April, and this year we're dealing with 30 degree days at the beginning of May. Doesn't really make much sense.
Thankfully the St. Paul campus has some color to offer up in the form of the adorable little scilla flowers that blanket the more wooded areas.

In other news, last week I started my greenhouse job and am having a really good time. Just being able to work in a place filled with plants makes even the more simple tasks enjoyable. We do a lot of rearranging displays, watering and lots and lots of sweeping. My favorite task so far was when we got a new shipment of  moth orchids in and I got to help unpack the boxes, tag them and set them out on display. It was like a mini Christmas, pulling plant after plant out of the boxes, all with amazingly vibrant colors. They were right in mid-bloom and absolutely gorgeous. Some of the larger varieties included some giant, pure white blooms, a white variety with purple spots on the petals and a purple center, one with yellow-green petals and a purple center and rich, dark purple ones as well. There were tiny ones too, some bright pink with yellow edges, purple with darker centers and peach colored ones with gold centers. I've probably ranted enough about orchids now... Anyway, I've found I have to learn things in a really short amount of time, and by no means do I know even close to half yet. But I have another full weekend of work starting tomorrow, so we'll see what that brings.

I'm planning on filling another Grow Write Guild prompt for my next post, but I'll probably be pretty busy until finals week is over. So probably somewhere around the 17th or 18th I'll try to have that up.
In the meantime, I leave you with more scilla carpet pictures. I hope spring is proving to be a lot...springy-er than mine!

What's Blooming on Campus (Part 2!)

Hort Major Update: Went and talked to an adviser from the agricultural college (the college the horticulture major is in) today. At this point, I'm on my way to becoming a horticulture major. ...If I can survive the chemistry and math classes that is. :P

But anyway. On to the flowers!
My Tuesday classes take me to the St. Paul Campus (unofficially the agricultural campus) which has lots more blooming than the main campus near the cities. So I went a bit crazy before class taking pictures of all of them.

 One of the flowering trees. Not quite sure what it is since I was en route to class and didn't stop to take a good enough look. 

Yellow tulips in front of the Student Center!

 The two-color tulips are probably my favorite...

 ...and there was a huge patch of them!

 The yellow tulips are such a nice sight on a gloomy Tuesday like today. 

 More scilla blooming in the woods. :) 

 Found some  puschkinia (what I thought was scilla until a reader pointed out what it really is. And it's related to scilla so no wonder I thought it was) blooming as well in front of one of the classroom buildings.

The color was just so delicate and lovely. I couldn't stop taking pictures.

Back on the main campus, a little church garden near my dorm building has a lot of things blooming. Notably is (if I've identified it properly) this redbud tree.

 I rather like the picture of this pretty flower with the University hospital towers looming in the background. 

 Hyacinths were blooming all over the garden too.

What's Blooming on Campus?

Happy Monday everyone! So since the unseasonably warm weather has brought out some spring flowers early, I thought I'd do a post on the early bloomers. We had temperatures here in the mid 70s in the middle of March so all the spring plants took off way earlier than normal. Now we're back down to mid-50s/60s weather, but the plants are still going strong.

The plants I see blooming the most all over campus are the adorable little Scilla flowers.

 

This particular scilla is Scilla siberica which reproduces and spreads through seed, often producing large colonies that will blanket forest floors or meadows in early spring. They grow best during this time because they like lots of moisture and the melting snow makes the soil almost constantly wet; the perfect conditions for these little plants.

A carpet of blue in the woods on the St. Paul campus. 

There's also a bunch of magnolia trees blooming along the sidewalks on the main campus. I think they're Lily Magnolia (Magnolia liliiflora) but I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me. 

 

These beauties have been gracing the campus sidewalks for a few weeks and, sadly, are starting to drop their petals. The picture above was taken last week. 

Hopefully once we get further into April, the tulips plants that have been cropping up everywhere will start to flower and I can get some pictures of those up. 

Coming up this week I'll hopefully have two big updates. Thursday I'll have an update one what's going on in my Horticulture Lab. And then, this weekend, I'll hopefully (if I convince my family to go) be making a trip to the Como Zoo Conservatory. They have their Easter flower show going on right now, so if that happens I'll have a huge post of pictures for you all to enjoy for Easter.