When I finally got to walk around the property with daylight (as opposed to my initial flashlight tour last night), I did discover that the first of the species Crocus have popped up.  This is good because I was going to disown them if they held off much longer.  It was kind of a grey morning and I made a full tour before the snow started about 9am.  I saw lots of green shoots coming up from the Daffodils and Tulips but the Crocus were the only flower besides the earlier Winter Aconite and Snowdrops.

First Crocus of the Season

I also took note of the Amaryllis that have finally done their thing.  We have two potted up and one is a double bulb and puts up multiple shoots.  The other is an apple blossom type.  Together they encourage me to think about planting some Amaryllis in the ground.  

Big Amaryllis Pot

Apple blossom type of Amaryllis

The other nice thing that happened today was the arrival of the Asiatica order.  This is a rare plant nursery that son Jonathan introduced me to.  They have some really unusual plants and their web pages or catalog are well worth perusing.  As it happens I had seen the Adonis while at the January Rock Garden Society  Meeting in Reston.  They have spectacular early yellow flowers and that seemed like a good idea to me.

Shipping order from Asiatica

We got 2 Adonis and an example  of the Hepatica japonica that Jon & Tuna have mentioned a lot

Hepatica from Asiatica