Signs of Spring: I. Winter's Flower Shows

How can you tell that spring is coming?

With the arrival of the flower and garden shows in late winter.

Last weekend I took in the Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show, a modest-scale event that is a nice afternoon for peeping, photographing, seed and bulb shopping, and magic-watching.

The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that the Boston Flower & Garden Show will be making a comeback next month after a one year hiatus following the "financial meltdown of its producer, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society."

In the interim, locals have had to make their way to another city -- such as Providence, Rhode Island -- to stop and smell the roses.


Red-twigged dogwood Cornus serinicea [right] and primroses (Primula) and daffodils (Narcissus) [left].