I have more than six photos to show you, but they’re grouped into six categories. We find ways to bend the rules, don’t we?

FORSYTHIA & CAROLINA JASMINE

The top/featured picture shows a forsythia shrub at the back corner of the tool shed. This is about as good as it gets most years. It had already started blooming in mid-January, then a deep freeze put everything on hold. Now, instead of a few blossoms each week, it has more simultaneous flowers for a better showing. Circumstances changed to run against the usual pattern.

This is actually my neighbor’s jasmine vine, but it runs up into our tall photina shrubs by the property line. This time of year, I find the ground delightfully littered with yellow bell-shaped flowers as they drop from the heights. This year, a section of that vine has wrapped itself among a small forsythia in the front yard. Both yellow plants are blooming at the same time now. I was thrilled to see this unusual little “patch of happy.” You can see they are both bell-shaped blooms, but not the same.

CAMELLIAS

Royal Velvet is blooming again! It’s a little earlier than usual, and more buds have opened at once than it customarily does.

I’m showing four types of camellia blossoms in the garden right now. They differ in both color and shape.

BACK CIRCLE FLOWER BED

The pansies and violas I planted last fall are finally looking pretty good – white violas up front with purple and white pansies behind them. The strappy foliage at the back is for a deep purple iris. I hope it blooms before these flowers are gone. I want to see them take the stage together.

SOUTHSIDE BED

On the sunny south side of the house, I have a variety of things blooming. Everything you see in the collage above is from that strip of flower bed. It may seem entirely random, but I think I’ve had sort of a plan in mind when I put things in the ground. Whatever that was escapes me now, but it’s all a joy to behold. You’ll find dianthus, pansies, snapdragons, snowflakes, tete-a-tete daffodils, and a small azalea on the end.

JAPANESE MAGNOLIA

My young Japanese Magnolia is blooming from the top down. I couldn’t get a good photo unless I stood on a ladder, so this one will have to do. I love the deep magenta or fuschia or whatever color it is. When the lower buds begin to open, I’ll show you a closeup. I hope by that time a fuschia-colored azalea behind it will have opened more fully, unless we’re hit with another freak cold snap.

FORMOSA INDICA AZALEA

This is the large azalea I referred to above. It has been here many years and is just behind the fairly new Japanese magnolia. Only a few blooms have opened but with the warm weather this week, it should be gorgeous soon. I always envisioned this as a “Spring corner” of the yard, and it is progressively becoming that more each year.

THE RULES

Our weather may have a general order, but we can’t count on rigid adherence to patterns every week.

Plants generally conform to their taxonomic rank but often surprise us when they behave unusually.

And people – don’t get me started. Most of us have some flexibility, but we struggle to cope with those who always operate “outside the box.” They’re almost as hard to deal with as those who are compulsively ironbound and concreted in their ways.

And God surprises us. Just when we think we’ve got HIm figured out, He shows us his goodness and creativity beyond imagination. Not because He changes, but because we are so limited in our understanding.

Lord, help us all to know you better. Show us your glory in your Word, in others, and in your natural world. But keep surprising us!