What can I say? The weather is totally bizzarre. March has crammed two months of spring flowers into one month, and what will be left for display in April I can't say. And the Teas and Chinas are in flower: I have a large, perfect bloom of 'Etoile de Lyon' beside me as I type. Normally the first roses bloom at the end of April. I've never know it to snow this late. Fortunately it was just a couple of inches, and its chief effect will be startling me.
I brought a couple of blooms of 'Safrano' and some fragrant violets to the two seven year olds I teach English to; "What's that?" they asked, pointing to the wet newspaper I'd wrapped the flowers in. "Open it up" I replied, and they did; they pounced on the flowers, like falcons on mice, and each carried off a rose and some violets to a personal spot. They LOVE flowers and willingly learn their names, Italian, English, and scientific. Every seven year old on the planet ought to be taken out in a garden and taught about plants.
Spring has been sweet if far too early, at once delicate and lush. Violets are always a joy this time of year. I've been trying to sort them out, so far without success, but at least I'm looking closely at the many in bloom, studying flower and leaf shapes, scent, rhizomes, branching, hairiness, and so on. There are several species in the province. I dug up one of a new kind I found, possibly Viola mirabilis (and possibly not) and brought it home, and plan on collecting more to grow on our own property. There's a lot to see in an area of woods and pastures if a person just keeps her eyes open. Yesterday I also found pink hepaticas--the usual color is blue.
The rose cuttings I think are going to be a bust again this year--the soil is still too heavy--but the suckers we took from the once-blooming old roses look like they're doing fine. This is excellent, as these are almost all plants of which I have just one specimen. I'm particularly pleased about the three forms of Rosa foetida, which we need more of in the garden, as they do well here, and especially I hope finally to have a decent plant of 'Austrian Copper', one of the brightest roses there is. DH loves the Foetidas.
On a darker note, 'Alba Maxima' has rust for the second spring in a row. Unheard of weather, unheard of disease.
Melissa

I have 1 Italian rose, a band of Clementina Carbonieri. I cannot wait to see the blooms. It was named after a beautiful woman.

The weather was lovely today. I got more done in the garden than I've ever done so early in the season because the soil was so soft and easy to dig. I made a kind of wild garden or tame meadow behind three lanky rugosas. I moved plants that are more or less weeds in the borders but good in a wilder setting, ox-eye daisies, oxlips, mallows, blue aquilegias, digitalis and forget-me-nots. Will move some campanulas there tomorrow, must strike while the ground is still soft in my normally stiff potter's clay.

Ingrid