Hellebores blooming in the garden, big post!

Folks,
We might get our third ice storm of March, usually we have a nice March. Some of the hellebores got crunched by fallen maple branches, but no plants were destroyed. We did loose two hellebore plants over the winter, Corsican Hellebore(ouch) and a small very dark red plant in the front garden.

We did not buy any new hellebores this year, I dug up and potted 36 baby hellebores for Meg's class and their "Garden Center". We are adding two new Daphnes and a Witch Hazel to the garden, photos below.

The Hellebores featured below, over 30 different ones from our garden and I did not photograph all of them..

 Slightly picotee white double hellebore.

 Picotee double hellebore.

 Swirling Skirts double hellebore!

 The ice likely beat this double up.

Semi double hellebore pinkish white.

 

Double yellow hellebore, picked this up last year.  Funny last year when I brought this home it had a slightly pink picotee to it. I like it boldly yellow just the same.

Gold Finch, this took like 4 years to bloom in the garden, babies all under it from last years blooms.

 Hard to see, the cold weather affected this one. The white with raspberry edges is hard to see.

 One of my biggest blooming plants I started from a seedling.

 

 Penny's Pink not quite open yet!

 Pink Frost

 Winter's Song

Honeyhill Joy

 Helleborus Viridus which was collected in the wild in Northern Italy.

Helleborus Liguricus

Now for some other blooming plants in the garden.

 Daphne

 Baby Moon daffodil my favorite daffodil, it is a miniature.

 Daphne alba new to our garden, need to find a big pot to plant it in.

 Witch hazel "Arnold's promise new to the garden needs to be planted.

 Camellai 'Crimson Candles' hit badly by the cold temps this winter. I hope it lives.

Crocuses.

Wandering peacock invades the chicken coop!

March already? Where does time go? And day light savings time just started.

Today I got home and found Meg lounging in the back yard. She tells me there is a peacock in the other side of the yard. I went around the corner to find this guy in the chicken coop. This fan on this peacock is 8-9 foot wide, can you believe that?

A little background on peacocks around here. For the past 5-6 years they have been kept across the gully at our back neighbors. They are loud to the point of being a nuisance from March until July, during their mating season. They call all night long and really loud. Guess who loves to have the windows open at night?

Never have I gotten a photo opportunity like this tonight. Great lighting and the peacock acted as if he lived here. The hens acted like he was not in their coop, no reaction what so ever to him.

 The span of that fan is like 8-9 foot, he's a big one!

My favorite shot in the entire series!

 Now this is a close up. I took this by setting the camera lens on the fence wire to steady the camera, he was 4-5 foot away.

The chickens just ignored him, see they could care less. I wonder if we still had a rooster what he'd have done? Flash the rooster died this winter.