Daffodils

Earth Day ConcertSue Trainor and Sue Ribaudo will blend harmonies on songs with varied rhythms during a family concert celebrating Earth Day from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at St. Marks on the Hill, 1620 Reisterstown Road in Pikesville. The singers will present a program that encourages audience participation from young and old. Both performers were nominated for WAMMIES as overall "Best New Artist" and "Best Duo/Group" last year by the Washington Area Music Association.Sponsored by the Baltimore Folk Music Society, the afternoon festivities also will include planting a tree on the church grounds and an ice cream social.

On Thursday, my iPad said the temperature was 75.  Daffodils and crocuses all over Baltimore bloomed. Ditto Okame cherry trees. The buds on Yoshinos cherry trees swelled, but they did not open to create the pink ballerina tutus that make Yoshinos famous.   That is a good thing. The current warm-up continued a warmer than usual winter. Much warmer than usual. So warm that for the first time since I started using Dracaena plants at the center of my summer annual containers, they did not die back in winter.

Cheer up. The Maryland General Assembly is closing down for another year. The United States and China should have agreed on rules of the game long before now. If the Chinese won't stop harassing U.S. spy planes in international air space (just), the Pentagon won't buy the army's new berets from China. So there. What a spring! The daffodils are late and the pitchers' battles remarkably early.

Sawing, sanding, sweeping, painting,Washing windows and the sills.(Look, a robin hopping briskly,And there, a ''host of daffodils.'')Get down, get busy, dust and polish,Wax the floor and mend the chair.(But pause and visit Sherwood Gardens --Their glory is for all to share.)Set out plants and trim the hedges,Rake the yard around the edges.Get out clothes for warmer weather.All too soon spring will decline.Now let's get ready, all together,And with all creation shine.

How bright are flower bulbs? Let's find out.Last week, I bought some spring-flowering bulbs and planted them at crazy angles. On purpose. I scooped out some dirt and stuck them in the ground, every which way but up. Some of these bulbs are now lying down. Others are pointed toward Asia. None are planted correctly.Why would I goof up my garden?I want to know if the bulbs are smarter than me.Can tulips survive when planted on their sides? Will daffodils turn themselves around when planted upside down?

THE HARSH winds and the brief cold snap have leveled the daffodils. My heart leaps up (in sorrow) when I behold the broken stems, to paraphrase Wordsworth.The early tulips have shot up to unfurl their colorful sheaths. The crocus were eager to flash their bright spring colors as a final confirmation of a warm, mild winter, before fading in fugacious routine. The bleeding heart in the center garden is dripping with tiny pink purses, the windflowers sprouting their pastel parasols.Yet it is the rows of daffodils and their cousins, jonquils, that are the messengers of true spring for me -- the hardy formations of closely bunched yellow and white blooms that support each other and array their colors in unmistakable eruptions of springtime.

Dispirited by the frigid temperatures? Desperate for spring? Try this antidote to the winter blues: tulips. Check out almost any florist, garden center or even supermarket right now, and you're likely to see these cheerful blossoms in cut-flower bouquets or growing in pots. January through April is prime season for such potted bulbs as tulips, hyacinths and daffodils, which are forced into bloom early to please the winter-weary. It's easy to see their appeal. Just look out a window anywhere there's a pot of colorful tulips sitting on the sill.

Quentin E. Erlandson, a retired Martin Marietta Corp. engineer and champion daffodil grower, died of a heart attack Monday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 85. Mr. Erlandson was born in Bottineau, N.D., a small farming village on the Canadian border. He moved with his family to Minneapolis, where he graduated from high school. After earning a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1939 from the University of Minnesota, he went to work for the Rural Electrification Administration in Washington.

Fall is the perfect season for the beginner gardener to get started. It's the traditional time to plant spring-blooming bulbs, which not only are very forgiving and easy to grow, but also provide welcome color during the early part of the year.Bulbs are also reassuringly reliable, as most come back every year. This makes them the natural backbone of most spring gardens.As an added plus, most bulbs are reasonably priced, except a few of the more exotic ones. Also, if you don't like the effect you produce the first spring, bulbs are easy to dig up and move about, or even pull out and discard if, say, the color combination turns out not to be what you had in mind.

Now coming into full spring green leaf, just in time for the Preakness and other May activities, are some 100 Norway maples which have been planted in the center strip of Northern Parkway from North Charles Street to Liberty Road.This marks the end of the first phase of Beautiful Baltimore's tree-planting program. The next phase will be to plant similar traffic-hardy trees along the center strip of Northern Parkway from Bellona Avenue east to Walther Boulevard, just a couple of blocks west of Belair Road.