The Garden is All Smiles!

The garden is smiling again! I love March for March means that it is pansy time and I can't wait for the pansies to arrive at the nurseries and garden centers. I'm always eager, probably, too eager. But I love pansies and they are faithful garden friends.

There are some of the winter pansies still in the garden and still blooming. But it is so good to clear out the winter from the boxes flanking the back door and the big window box in the back and put pansies in!!!

At lunch on Sunday someone told me that the garden center had pansies -- I couldn't leave quick enough . . . and came home with three flats!

The boxes by the back door. It's a very dressy door considering that it leads to the basement! And via a short flight of steps up into the pantry and finally into the kitchen.

It was bare as I just had greens in the boxes this year. And they've been long gone!

But filled with garden pansies -- they are a bright spot as we come and go (as we usually do) by this door. It's such a pretty door that occasionally, new company will think that this is the front door!!!!

The window box in back -- the big window box that brings so much joy to us as it's seen from the breakfast room. Tired (very tired) evergreen boughs from Crhistmas and big pine cones. It was a great Christmas and January look but it's so sad in March.

But filled with multi-colored pansies, it's a great way to welcome spring!!!! It just makes spring seem all that much closer!

And the pansies -- they can stand a little cold (much better than they can stand a little heat!) and should be fine -- even if a little snow may fall on them (and last year it did!).

I still have the front planters to plant but the evergreens are still looking good and so I will wait a while. I need to replenish the soil in those planters before I plant . . . but I have the pansies . . . . sometimes this week I am sure the front will be as spring welcoming as the side and back!

What to do after a Sunday drive to pick up pansies, an afternoon spent planting them . . . .

Why have a cup of tea, of course, and a nosh . . . while reading a cookbook, Dorie Greenspan's Baking, From My Home to Yours, in search of a new recipe for a cake for Tuesday when company's coming for dessert.

I always have palmiers in the freezer. Easy to bake off for an afternoon treat with a cup of tea. And a new tea plate -- another Asiatic Pheasant in blue. This one is by Royal Stafford and made in England "at the potteries" (or so it says on the back.

I've decided between two cakes but I'm not sure which I'll bake. I don't have to decide until tomorrow so I'll give it some thought.

From winter to spring in the flower boxes is my metamorphosis for this Monday and my tea is the blue for this Monday. I'm joining both Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Met Monday and Smiling Sally for Blue Monday.