Whoa, it was a hot spring day!

Today I think it hit 90 degrees here, boy was it hot! The dragonflies finally appeared! I was driving out the drive and I saw about 12-15 of them chasing a hatching of small bugs. I got out and IDed Stream Cruiser, Blue Corporal and Common Basketail. When I got back later all were gone. Below the pond I saw a forth species of dragonfly but did not get the full ID it was one of the two sundragons.

For the past three nights American Toads have been calling all night. I want to go and look for them soon, when I get the time.

Anyway here are some of our latest bloomers in the garden.

 Clematis Armandii  'Snowdrift' I picked this up last year at the Durham Garden Center, it has grown at least 3 foot this year. Stone Brothers has a bunch of them today, all bloomed out. I've not picked up the strong fragrance this year.

Our Bleeding Hearts.
Been drooling over Catherine's Bleeding Hearts. 

Here above and below is Mount Hood daffodil. This one started out with the yellow cone as above and it  fades to a pure white. The two earliest ones have turned all white but look bad from the rain we had the other night.

Miniature daffodil Tazetta Canaliculatus

These are 4-5 inches tall! I have been seeing swallowtail butterflies attracted to them too.

Here is another Tazetta daffodil Golden Dawn
These are 12-14 inches tall and I wish I'd planted more of these!

Here is a daffodil 'Golden Echo'

Baby Moon with an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail enjoying it!

Another Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on our creeping phlox.

Something I been waiting to see for the first time Muscari 'Golden Fragrance"
Not sure if it will get more yellow or not.

Could not resist this shot of crocus 'Pickwick'

Spring Wildflower: Cut-leaf Toothwort

On Sunday Meg and I took a nature walk together at the old Occoneechee Speedway Park. This was one of the first two NASCAR tracks that opened in 1949 and it closed in 1968. Our parks have been working on preserving it.

Last year our first visit there we saw thousands of Cut-leaf Toothwort, Cardamine concatenata just past its prime. So we hoped to see this  spring ephemeral fresher this year. Well I think we hit the target this year. Below are some examples of what we saw.

You don't normally see such full blooms like this one!

More of a normal plant, see the cut-leaf leaves?

Some plants can have a purple tint, not many were this purple.

These two Trout Lilies were trying to out show the Cut-leaf Toothwort. Lots of Trout Lilies were seen as well!

Thousands of Spring Beauties were seen as well. Normal Spring Beauties have five petals like these. On another post I'll show some with six, seven and nine petals.

Meg also found a Letter Box hidden under a hollow tree, we looked it up at http://www.atlasquest.com/. The box had a handmade stamp of a 49 Oldsmobile the first car the win a race at the speedway! There was also the letterbox with stamped notes from others that had found it.