Welcome To Rosie's Winter Garden.

It's close to Spring! These pictures are from March 4, 2011. The next post's pictures will be from today, March 12, so you can get an idea of the timing involved. New growth is coming out on my roses. The greenery around is larkspur which will shoot up in the next month and bloom pinks and lilacs and blues and whites and the occasional yellows.

My jonquils are opening up. Wind is whupping them. Heads are bowed.

The hyacinths are just starting to come up.

Such promise.

This is stock - one of the first spring bloomers in my garden. In a few weeks these plants will be blooming in purples, blues, pinks, reds, and whites.

I'm not quite sure what this is. I threw out a box of perennial seeds and this is probably from that mix.

Mar? Help me out here.

This is some of my cilantro which now grows year-round along with my parsley.

My backyard with a lettuce mix in the front we're still eating and some mixed greens in the back.

This is Daphne. It has quite a delicious aroma.

According to Greek myth, the nymph Daphne was being pursued by Apollo. Eros, the God of Love, was upset with Apollo, a great warrior, because he had made fun of Eros' archery skills. Apollo taunted Eros, "What have you to do with warlike weapons? Leave them for hands worthy of them." A miffed and pissed Eros picked up his golden arrow, which was supposed to incite love, and shot Apollo through the heart. With his leaden arrow, supposed to incite hatred, he shot Daphne. Apollo was seized with love for Daphne and she in turn, upon seeing the object of her hatred, despised Apollo. Apollo constantly followed Daphne and she continued her flight away from him. Daphne (from the Greek meaning "laurel") called out for help to her father, the river god Peneus, and was transformed into a laurel (Laurus nobilis). "... a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left." The laurel became sacred to Apollo and was used to crown the victors at the Pythian games. Apollo used his powers of immortality and eternal youth to render Daphne ever green and since then, the leaves of the Bay laurel tree have never known decay. Apollo and the transformation of the beautiful Daphne by Antonio del Pollaiolo. Thank you to my dear friend Marion, who sent me this link of Bernini's Apollo and Daphne.

Japonica fatsia.