When I hear the term “spring babies,” I usually think of lambs, chicks, and piglets on a farm. Our yard has hundreds of baby plants this spring – flowers spreading beyond their original locations.

There’s a saying: the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap. Some of these are second years and some are third years or beyond, and I’m seeing a lot of creeping and leaping.

The pearly everlasting is creeping earlier than expected. What started as two small pots two years ago has expanded exponentially. Last year we divided the original clump into four, and this year all four are bigger – with offshoots in about 15 additional spots within 15 feet of the original. It’ll be fun to see them blooming, but I will need to trim them before they go to seed this fall so the entire garden isn’t pearly everlasting next year.

Star of beauty: a perfect example of a third-year creeper. If I am remembering correctly, this one was planted in the fall of 2011. It has looked nice every year and has produced lots seeds, but it didn’t spread. Until now. I’m letting most of them grow around the “mother” plant, though I moved some to a second location. I will need to thin them out further because all of those little green shoots in the upper left corner are star of beauty, too.

Tall sunflower: Last year’s seven or so stems are now about seventy. I’ve already divided it twice and moved the extras to two other locations, and there are still way too many for this one spot.

Lupine: there are dozens of these little “palm trees” all over the front garden.

Yellow coneflower is spreading rapidly near the main plant – even in the driveway, and taking over the candytuft.

I could spend an entire day pulling out the many tree seedlings:

I generally have an “innocent until proven guilty” policy with plants: I’ll let them grow until I identify that they’re weeds. There are so many of these growing in a spot where I planted blue vervain seeds last fall that I first thought that’s what they were. But they’re already flowering at their very short height, so I’m afraid they’re not blue vervain after all. It will be a big task to pull hundreds of these seedlings, if I can’t identify them soon.

Back to the wanted flowers. Hollyhocks make me happy, and it looks like there will be a lot of new ones this year.

Snowdrop anemone: I liked this plant so much that I bought a second one last year. The older one, near the front door, has tripled in size. And a seed head must have flown to a far corner last fall because there are dozens of babies growing all around the false indigo.

Milkweed: I didn’t intentionally plant these; they were a happy result of last year’s three (supposedly failed) milkweeds. It looked so bad that I pulled it before it seeded – or so I thought. At last count, there are 35 new plants, with more popping up pretty much every day. Unfortunately they don’t transplant well, or I would move several to other locations around the yard. Hopefully the monarchs find them.

My husband and I were out of town today when a strong thunderstorm blew through. We found plenty of hail still remained when we returned at least an hour later:

Some of our plants were injured, mostly the taller plants like this turtlehead:

For the most part, the damage appears minor, limited to just a few broken leaves.

This wild ginger, a single leaf for many years, finally spread and flowered this year but now doesn’t look so good:

Trillium sessile – standing tall this morning, then looking sad after the storm:

Fortunately, it looks like most of the damage is superficial. I’m hoping that all of them will bounce back yet this spring.

We may have had snow just a week ago, but most daily temperatures lately have been warmer than normal, in the 60s and 70s. Flowers are starting to wake up for the spring.

Our beautiful white peonies with flecks of magenta − “festiva maxima” − grew quickly this year.

They were nearly as tall as I am, but before we could get a picture to compare, we’ve had storm after storm for days. Lots of rain, rain, and more rain − but the wind really took its toll.

This was the first year we had planned ahead and set up a support cage, which worked well until the weekend. Now, all of the stems except one are bent at the top of the cage. Next year, we’ll need to find a taller one.

Plant source: They came with the house