A Week of Flowers: Day 5

It's Day Five of Cathy's 'A Week of Flowers' at Words and Herbs and I'm joining in again with my second post.  Absent a glitch in my schedule, I'm planning to hang on through Day Seven.  Cathy's invited bloggers to join in with photos of flowers or other joys of nature to buoy the spirits of gardeners and others in the Northern Hemisphere who may be experiencing gloomy skies and cold temperatures.  I can't actually claim either at the moment in sunny Southern California, where we're experiencing warmer-than-usual temperatures at the moment.  But my garden is still missing the color (other than green) I'm used to and this is a way for me to dampen my impatience for spring's arrival.

Here are a few of the early spring plants I celebrated last February:

I plant Anemone coronaria corms in the raised planters of my cutting garden every year.  These were supposed to be 'Lord Lieutenant' but I'm guessing they were 'Mr Fokker'.  Regardless of their name, they were appreciated!

This is Anemone 'Rosa Tigrato'.  I planted this one and a few new varieties this fall.  The corms are already sprouting and I'm hoping they'll bloom on a similar schedule in 2025.

This is my favorite Arctotis, called 'Pink Sugar'.  She made a very early appearance last February.  However, several of my plants died back over the summer and now we're seriously short on rain.  I took some cuttings, though, so my fingers are crossed that I'll manage a replay of my success in 2024 anyway.

Osteospermums prefer cool temperatures.  During the summer months, they enter the plant world's version of a witness protection program.  I flat out lost many of them this summer.  They're short-lived perennials here and I'm hoping to find replacements for those I lost in my local garden center soon.