The overture has gone on too long. Days are lengthening. Rains have replaced snows. Yet spring seems reluctant to make a final break with winter. Just as the separation seems final, in comes another burst of air far colder than it ought to be. Continued cool weather has kept the Garden from dazzling on this Easter weekend when so many once-a-year visitors will come hoping to confirm the arrival of spring. Tulips are up far enough to the mark the spots where they were interplanted with pansies last fall; new daffodils are beginning to bloom replacing the early blooming ones stuck down by the cold. (I talked with a friend who described the cold-weakened daffodils as "acting dopey." Another called the early arrivals "just too eager to please.) Still no signs of crabapples or magnolia. The early magnolias were nipped by frost and now are either completely browned-out or are blooming with a fringe of brown.

Easter is tomorrow. Today the Garden hosts an "egg-stravaganza" for the youngsters. Keepers are out in the Knolls cordoning off egg hunting areas with the pink, purple, and yellow ribbons of Easter. Inside, near the entrance, kids are being registered for the hunt by elegant older women looking silly with their tiaras of rabbit ears. While kids wait in line or mill around waiting for the hunt to begin, they are entertained by a pink and white costumed Easter bunny. None of these kids will notice the delay of spring or the browned-tipped magnolia. For them, all is as it should be.

This week nearly all of the fountains have been switched on. Still to come are those around the Kemper Gardens. Moving water is so much a part of the Garden that without water, a piece seems missing. Out too are the elegant earth-colored pots filled with the usual assortment of spring flowers and foliage, except for one unusual planting that I couldn't quite figure out. The pot is wide and low. A few inches from its rim a ring of lawn grass about three inches high has been planted. Pansies fill the inside of the ring. After I finished my walk, I came back to the pot again and squinted while I stared at it. Often I squint at things I don't quite get to clear clutter and get to essence. It was a nest. A circle of grass holding and protecting the big-faced pansies standing in for new hatchlings.

From time to time, I get fascinated again by the museum that George I. Barnett designed and built for Henry Shaw in 1859 using a building at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew as a model. This morning I read a bronze plaque high on the north wall, It says that on the ceiling of the museum, "painted under Mr. Shaw's direction," is a large mural that depicts the flora of the world. It goes on to say that the mural was restored in 1930 and then the museum was reopened to the public. For as long as I've been coming to the Garden the museum building has been closed. Until today, I knew nothing about Shaw's floral mural. When I got home I went to my favorite book about the Garden, A World of Plants: The Missouri Botanical Garden. Not much there except for a small photo of part of the ceiling. In the photo were a palm dangling a stock of ripe bananas, a yucca in bloom, some climbing pink roses, and a vine of trailing ivy. In the foreground, perched on a railing, was a rendering of a peacock. From what I could tell from the photo, the mural is in need of repair: chips of paint have flecked off exposing a underlayer of white and the ceiling on which the painting was done is cracking. The museum has always been a mysterious place to me--tightly closed, yet situated in an intriguing building in a very prominent location. I wonder what the whole mural looks like now?

This is the week I knew would come. The delicate white blossoms of the flowering plum trees (Prunus cerasifera 'Thundercloud') that surround the secluded Arbor of the Plum Wind in the Japanese Garden have opened. Each year I look forward to sitting on a bamboo bench under the arbor looking out at the lake while drinking in the fragrance of the plum blossoms that by next week likely will be gone.

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It was immediate. As soon as the automatic doors opened to the Garden, we both said, "They turned the fountain on." The Latzer fountain with its circular jets of water spraying water high into the air centers the attention of every visitor entering the Garden. More than early tulips, the return of the Latzer Fountain signals that Spring has arrived. In no time at all, we will be sitting on the patio outside the Garden Café entertained by group after group posing in front of the fountain for souvenir photos.

Two nights ago the nighttime temperature went down to 15 degrees with a wind chill that hovered near zero. How much damage has been done to spring I don't know yet. High on my watch list are the azalea, magnolia, crabapple, and Japanese cherries. Many of the especially prized or vulnerable bulbs in the Samuels and Heckman bulb gardens had been covered with agricultural cloth or upturned plastic five-gallon pots. Blooming unprotected daffodils were hit hard as was a patch of Kaufmania tulips that had just opened.

A one of a kind: a fuzzy daffodil called 'Rip Van Winkle' was in flower in a sheltered part of the English Woodland Garden. It is yellow like an ordinary daffodil, but there the resemblance stops. Instead of petals and a snout, Rip looks like a regular daffodil that has been put through a shredder. Pat thinks 'Rip Van Winkle' is just right for a name. Forty years of sleep with no chance to see a barber.

The remaining winterberries in the Bird Garden have attracted a flock of a dozen or more Cedar Waxwings. We had at other times seen pairs of them, but were startled to see so many, so close. While neither of us are birders, we did see the distinctive tip of yellow at the end of their tails and the touch of red on end of their wings. We don't know enough about birds to know what these markings or this sighting may mean.

Another rare sighting was a group of teenage boys and girls talking animatedly as they worked their way through the garden. Not an adult leader in sight; nor were any of them carrying the telltale worksheets of a mandatory visit. They just seemed to be here on a chilly Saturday morning enjoying each other with the Garden as background. I hope for more of these sightings.

About this time of year the purple martin scouts ought to be back to the houses and hollowed out gourds made for them in the Bird Garden Nothing yet. All I saw on the houses today was a lone sparrow who had not yet received an eviction notice.

After a week away, I was expecting more of spring. The long-range weather forecast for warm sunny days while we were away primed me for dramatic change. Instead I found that nothing much had happened while I was away. The grass was noticeably greener; the bronze tips of the 'Wintergreen' boxwood bordering the Linnean House made a quick change to lime green; and a few more daffodils were in bloom. I had hoped for more, but happy that I didn't miss out on anything.

A host of minor bulbs are in flower: Glory of the Snow, squills, iris reticula, and tiny white fuzzy things that surely have a name. In years past, I've vowed that I would learn to smugly name even the slightest of these tiny spring splotches. I've given up. Now, instead of trying to see these little ones as individuals, I'll enjoy them as are carpets of pattern and texture.

As expected, it was closed tight at this time of day, but nonetheless, I count it as the first tulip sighting of the season. Rising up from a vase of leaves too course and stubby to be proper for a "real" tulip, was a short stock bearing a red-rose and lemon-yellow Greigii tulip. Let spring begin.

It's happened before. In my notes of other years I remember writing about an untimely cold snap that wiped out the daffodils. This year I'll make no such prediction. We did have near zero weather a few weeks ago; the more eager daffodil spears were nipped and are now tinged with brown. What flowers today is sparse and anemic. But, I have learned that setbacks of this kind rarely stop daffodils from taking part in spring. After a couple of weeks of warmer weather, they will return. Another prediction.

Of the daffodils blooming now, my favorite is a variety called "Cyclamineus." Their petals look as though they're been pinned back and they have abnormally large snouts that nod downward. I learned that the daffodil people divide their world into twelve divisions. The Cylamineus varieties are in Division 6. They are so-named because the flowers look like cylamen (I never saw they connection until now). I also learned that all daffodils have two parts: the corona (the part that juts out) and the perianth (the group of six petals). Cyclamineus varieties have "perianth segments [petals] that are significantly reflexed [swept back] with flowers at an acute angle to the stem [pointing down]." I wonder if knowing all this will help me like them more?

Everywhere the grass is littered with plugs of soil popped out of the ground by some kind of machine that roams on days I don't. It must be essential for the vitality of the grass, but just now, before the spring rains have had a chance to dissolve the two-inch cylinders, the Garden looks as though a pack of dogs have claimed the open spaces as their territory.

Not a sign of the Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger 'Altifolus') that supernova-ed less than a month ago. The Lenten rose varieties that were slow to start are still flowering brilliantly.

At any time of year, Henry Lauder's Walking Stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta') with its gnarled and twisting branches attracts my attention. The small tree looks as though it would do well in one of those traveling carni freak shows at a time when staring at the unusual was more usual. Today Henry Lauder is dressed to the T's. Hanging ever so gracefully from its branches are these long tassel-like catkins. As they were caught by the breeze, I thought of South Sea dancers and Victorian women dancing to Strauss waltzes.

Yellow forsthia are common as dirt. School yards, highway embankments, and deserted lots all have their share. Familiarity makes me pass them by with barely a glance. But white forsythia: that's another matter. While the flowering is toothier than the yellows, they stand out just because they I see them far less often.

As the automatic doors of the Monsanto Center opened out into the Garden, I smelled the unmistakable scent of earthworms. The rain that has been falling since midnight has driven them above ground, much to the delight of the many robins who pay close attention to such things.

The rain has accented the patterning of the pealing bark of the paperbark maples planted in the Cohen Court. I'm not sure why I did, but I did spent a while looking at the patches of light and dark on the flaking bark to see it I could turn the patterns into the outlines of a familiar face. No such luck. I left without seeing a Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton, or even a Jay Leno.

For as many years as I can remember, a dramatic Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda 'Plena') has draped itself, ever so gracefully, around a small pergola along the east wall of the Garden. Its vines engulfed the wooden uprights and side panels. Over the years we're taken many pictures of main trunk growing into and becoming part of wooden slates. Regardless of whether it was a battle between living wood or dead wood or a symbiotic compromise, I knew the pergola was losing when I saw binding wire being used to keep the corner joints at the top from popping open. Still, I never imaged that the wisteria would be sacrificed for the pergola. I was wrong. The pergola was bare this morning. All traces of the vine had been pried from the wood. The only remnant of what once was was the crosshatched section of wood where wood and vine were merging. There will be no wisteria here this year. If there is a hopeful sign though, the truck of the wisteria vine has not been cut to the ground and removed without a trace. Two sections of trunk remain. The keepers may know that these will regenerate in time to cable around some new stronger pergola.

Today's the day: I spotted the first daffodils of the season. Rightfully, it was blooming in the mausoleum garden to please the remains of the founder of it all, Henry Shaw.

We spotted a large injured raccoon on the hillside that slopes toward the lake in the Japanese Garden. It limped and rolled and hobbled its way toward the shelter of a shrub near the waterside and then lay still. Pat kept watch, while I walked to the Kemper Center to alert the Garden keepers. Going back, we both waited until the security people arrived. They said something about calling animal control, but we didn't stay to see the story end.

On rainy winter days my favorite place to stand is near the American Beech tree at the entrance to the English Woodland Garden. The tree keeps tis papery-thin buff colored leaves all winter. Thin enough to resonate, yet stiff enough to offer resistance the rain drops, the tree offers a complicated percussive rhythm on a morning like this one.

The pussy willow in the Japanese Garden have burst from their protective cases. The show has just started. Some of the twigs had yet to join the chorus.

I'm trying out a pair of walking shoes that I protected against moisture with repeated coats of mink oil. My feet are soaked.

Next week, I'll miss seeing the Garden. Instead though, we're going to make our annual visit to Kew, I wonder how the camellia growing there without benefit of greenhouses are doing?

This is the peak of the season for the camellias in the Linnean House. To draw more attention to the display, signs have been put in strategic places urging visitors to go inside to see this once a year show. Camellias have been flowering since November, but today with the number and variety in bloom, they deserve the signs. By coincidence, this week too the library system was able to fetch Anne Cunningham's book Crystal Palaces for me. It's a book loaded with pictures and some words about garden conservatories in the United States. As the oldest glass house west of the Mississippi, the Linnean House and its camellia display gets more than passing mention. Cunningham singles out one camellia for her attention: camellia chrysantha. I've known about it for years and passed it by for more years. It's easy to slight. A low lying shrub with a canopy of glossy green leaves hide many of the flowers--small with heads that face down. It's rare and unique for one reason: it's yellow. Nearly every other camellia in the world is some variant of red, pink, or white. The sign describing camellia chysantha has a panda symbol in the left corner. I'm not sure, but I think this is the symbol used for a rare and endangered specie.

The plumes of the tall grasses are gone, but the seed pods on many deciduous trees and shrubs remain: tulip poplars, American bladdernuts, Kentucky coffee tree, Japanese pagoda tree, and my favorite, the crape myrtle. At the ends of long stocks that jut above the woody stems are clusters of tiny, round, dark seed balls placed precisely at the tips of stems arranged in a triangular shape. The effect is like a Christmas tree trimmed with elegant formal ornaments.

Secretly progressing, unseen until today is a clump more than a foot across of white hellebore called Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger 'Altifolus'). Smack in the middle of the English Woodland Garden away from the large patch of Lenten Rose (Helleborus orientalis) that I've had my eye on for weeks, the splotch of white just suddenly appeared. Unlike other hellobores that are mostly green leaves with a few reticent flowers mixed in, Christmas Rose is pure flower; no leaves. I suppose the foliage will trail behind, but for now this extraordinary member of the hellobore clan is center stage. A few years ago I used to make a pick of the week. I don't do that any more, but if I did, Christmas Rose would be it.

The garden is filled with the hammering sounds of woodpeckers or flickers hollowing out dead tree branches to make spaces that I suspect will become sheltered spots for the next generation. I wasn't able to spot any of the birds, but the sounds were unmistakable.

In the Jenkins Daylily Garden are several patches of blue snow crocuses (crocus tommasinianus). They are larger, more tubular than the usual types. Their light orchid hue looks streaked with white, but I can't tell for certain because I've never seen them when they were opened. More than other crocuses, they seem very selective about who sees them in flower and when. I came across a bit written by English Garden writer E. A. Bowles that seems to fit. Comparing them to the autumn blooming saffron crocus that once opens never closes, he says the snow crocus "behaves more sensibly, and closes as tightly as you please on dull days and at night, and moreover it is a handsome plant."

Pat found a bright red latex balloon still filled with helium, Its tie ribbon was tangled, tethering it to a shrub. Pat rescued it and led the red balloon though the garden to add some cheer to a landscape of mostly browns and grays, Treating the balloon like a lost child, Pat finally turned it over to the Garden caretakers where it will wait for its owners to claim it.

February is like sitting in a waiting area, killing time until the announcement comes to board the plane that will take you to that place you can't wait to see. It's a month when any spot of red in a landscape of browns and grays is noticed and cheered. In other seasons, red has to complete with even livelier hues for my attention; now it pulls my eyes and enlivens my spirits -- a woman wearing a red coat; a male cardinal perched on a bare branch. Next winter, I shall wear red.

The plumed grasses in the Japanese Garden must have been cut yesterday. There are still traces of their narrow papery leaves on the ground and sidewalk. I was surprised to see that the mounted clumps, now crewcutted, were sporting a few green sprouts near their centers -- a sure sign that a new season is beginning, and like it or not, the cutting needed doing.

Quinces and Cornelian cherry dogwood have both had tight BB-like blossom heads all winter. Today I noticed slight cracks had developed in the blossom balls revealing slivers of color -- pink, cream, and pale yellow.

The catbird in winter residence on Henry Shaw's bronze head is still there. This morning Pat was able to get to within a couple of feet of it to take a picture. Unyielding, the bird ignored her.

Some of the koi that hang-out near the plank bridge in the Japanese Garden are back. During the winter they languished in deeper water. Now a dozen or so of the colorful fish have surfaced to resume their learned behavior of opening wide to beg for food thrown to them by passerbys.

Witchhazels never disappoint. From the first frost through the turn of winter, one or another of them is in bloom. In February, they are at their prime. The slanted morning sun glancing through petals that look like shards of shredded paper makes the whole shrub light up. I found a great spot to stand to take in their beauty and their sweet, lightly spicy scent. Off the path, just south of the plank bridge in the Japanese Garden, there is a "sweet spot," midway from four witchhazels. All are good-sized, more small trees than shrubs. They are positioned on all sides--north, south, east, and west--so that in whatever direction I face or whatever direction the wind blows, the witchhazels oblige.

In summer and until the hard freeze, gourds hung down from between the wooden slats of the roof of the summer plant house in the Kemper Gardens. The gourds hung like delicate paper lanterns at a summer fete. Called 'speckled swan" the gourds were dipper-shaped--thin on top expanding to round, ample bottoms on the bottom. They were lime-green with bands of cream-colored speckled spots around them. Then, after the first frost they were gone. Too sensuous to throw away, I thought they probably were given to garden volunteers or were kept by their caretakers. What a surprise to see some of them again. Two of them had been taken in to the Kemper Center and put on a display shelf to age gracefully.

I have always potted hyacinths for forcing. They always bloom sweetly in January or February, but I always have to stake and tie them to keep them from flopping over. The tall stakes of thin bamboo and wire ties destroy the illusion of early hyacinths as messengers of a wild, unfettered spring. Besides that, the tall stakes are hazards when I lean over to gather up their rich, distinctive scent. Today I found a better solution. Caretakers of the potted deep-blue hyacinths called 'Atlantic' that border the Moorish fountain in the Temperate House use short stakes--thin and foliage-colored. They are hidden inside the pot to prop up the lower florets and stocks of each flower cluster. They do the job elegantly without letting casual admirers know there was a job that needed doing.

Pat put her finger on it: "There's a sense of expectancy here today." Pruning is finishing; the debris of past seasons is gone; a light cover of dark, fragrant leaf mulch is being put down over the lighter finely chipped wood mulch that served for winter. All is tidy; ready for the biggest season of the Garden's year.

Moles are troublesome to the Garden keepers. Turf barrels up tracing brown paths in grassy fields. Today we noticed that traps have been placed at mid runs of the moles' bulging trails. According to a Missouri agriculture department publication that I read, the creatures are called eastern moles (Scalopus aquaticus). This is their breeding time, so I guess the traps are meant to X-out the next generation of two to five new moles per female. The traps set in the Garden are called harpoon traps. A mole traveling through its shallow tunnel trips a level causing a powerful spring to release three sharp spikes that impale and kill the "ground swimmer." Sounds fast and deadly. Still I'd hate to be either the mole or the keeper who has to gather up the remains.

In the general tidying up that's been done, the plumes of most of the miscanthus have been cut. If I had these in my garden, I would have left them to enjoy for a few more weeks. Without the high winds or ice storms that damaged the plumes in other winters, they deserved better.

Only a couple of weeks ago, visitors had to know where to look to see the first tentative signs of spring. Today even the casual stroller can't miss seeing the snowdrops, hellebores, witch hazels, and flowering apricot. Clusters of blooms have replaced single tentative flowers. I'm encouraged now to begin my annual search for the first daffodil. Daffodil sightings in the Garden are usually a week or two behind the spottings I make in walks around my neighborhood. Maybe the cultured types planted here take longer to preen thenselves before they're ready to go out in public.

I bought a digital camera last week--an Olympus D-510. The manual and on-screen settings are imposing. Like most things that are technically possible, I'll probably only toot a few of this camera's whistles. I decided to bring it along today and use it with whatever default settings its makers thought best for me. I've never felt comfortable with any kind of cameras, smugly feeling that picture taking gets in the way of seeing and thinking about what I see. I think that I have that attitude because Pat does most of the picture taking and I get to enjoy her work without having to expend the effort.

There are two prominent flowering apricot trees (Prunus mume) in the Garden. One is in the Chinese Garden. The other my favorite, is a few feet from a brick wall that rises a bit higher than the tree. The wall faces South so it gets and keeps every bit of scarce winter sun. The apricot tree, responding to the shelter on the North and the radiated heat from the nearby wall has come into full bloom. With the flowering comes a remarkable delicate tantalizing scent.

It's been several years now since we saw a couple of pre-teen boys dipping their arms up to their shoulders into the shallow moat around the fountain in the Moorish Garden. When they saw us they left. We figured fast that they were dipping for the dimes and quarters that other visitors had tossed in for luck or fond memories. This morning when we walked though the archway into the garden, we saw a woman, gray-haired, dressed in Patagonia-type outdoor gear, on her knees leaning over dipping for change. Apparently fountain cleaning is not just a habit of the young.

When we left for the Garden the sky was clear; the sun was bright. Not a doubt in my mind what that the groundhog would see his shadow today and quash all hopes for an early spring. Now though, high clouds have moved in, filtering and diffusing the sun. Here the local Zoo-kept groundhog, a female named Chester by his/her handlers who picked a name before checking the anatomy, will emerge at 11:00 a.m. to make a prediction. By then, the cloud cover is sure to thicken blocking sun and shadows.

During the warm weather last week, visitors to the camellia display in the Linnean green house have been picking up spent blossoms and tossing them into the ponds near the South entrance to the house. The heavy bottoms and delicate upward curving petals of the flowers keep them floating upright and moving to the breezes. Today though the water is frozen. The ice has trapped the blossoms pushing them below the surface. The ponds look like a jello fruit salad or a tomato aspic.

The plinth with the date 1668 visible in an ornate border of floral vines still supports no statue. Why 1668? Why in the hosta garden? What historically is so significant to need commemoration in such a much-visited part of the garden?

The injured catbird that we spotted last week is still here. As it was a week ago, it's perched on top of the statue of Garden founder Henry Shaw located just outside his Tower Grove House. The bird must stay there much of the time because Shaw's bronzed-colored hair is streaked with dripping lines of white and dabbed with blotches of gray. the bird looks plumper and healthier since we last saw it, but its injured right leg still dangles freely.

In the English Woodland Garden Pat found a papery husk of that had fallen from an American bladder nut tree that borders the path. It was still intact. When she shook it the seeds inside made a surprisingly loud rattle.

A heavy frost added a bed of needles that poke up at right angles to the leaves of many of the shrubs. The effect is especially nice on the bronzed tiny rounded leaves of the some of the azalea in the Japanese Garden.

The small human-like tracks of a raccoon are etched in the frost on the wooden planks of the Flat Bridge in the Japanese Garden.

One of the large trees in field where the crocus grow was felled by a rain and wind storm last summer. Other trees in that field are also mature--beautiful in their aging, but perhaps just as vulnerable. Planning for the inevitable, I noticed that a three-to-four-foot tree had been planted near the stump of the now-gone tree. The identifying sign calls it 'Hungarian Oak' (Quercus frainetto). According to my National Garden Book it's also called an Italian Oak and is native to Southern Europe. It will be a mammoth: huge 8" glossy green leaves deeply lobed. No description of fall color though. The tree--erect and broad-- may top 100 feet, taller than any other oak mentioned in the book. There is no word on how fast this giant will grow but I'm glad it's started growing to shade those who will walk this way after me.

A few--just a few--tiny bright yellow crocus are flowering in the open expanse north of the mirrored Lehman Administration Building. The flowers are tightly closed just now but with a bit of sun, the plump buds are sure to open for visitors who arrive later.

I just couldn't stand not knowing what Chester, our local groundhog, would have to offer about the days to come. So from the Garden we went to the Zoo, getting there just at 11:00 a.m., the official forecast time. By the time we arrived, people were four-deep around a circular makeshift pit formed by straw bales. Kids were naturally pushed up to the front and held in place by their parents. But a lot of the inner ring was filled with camera people from every television station in town poking the long lenses of their cameras straight at Chester. Chester, looking clean, sleek, and well-brushed for the occasion, obligingly circled the pit a few times while being watched carefully by a handler armed with a net should Chester decide to get frisky. A consensus: television, handlers, kids, and the crowd. Chester saw his shadow. Winter's not over yet.

clear: light breeze: 34º

It have done their work. Vistas that were hidden by small trees and green shrubs have appeared. The pergola near the Linnean House is now almost bare. The vine that bore the wisteria up it's sides and though the slats in its top has been drastically cut back. The seed pods that dangled down like pendant on a chandelier as recently as last week are gone. Near ground level, there is a fresh cut where a vine three inches across was cut. I always admire the quality of the pruning done in the Garden. Cuts are always sharp and clean with a slope that allow the water to run-off at just the right angle. Rarely is other bark ever torn or frayed.

Gone to is the crescent of ten-foot shrubs trained like hedges to form a backdrop for a crescent of yews in front of them. Months ago one of the shrubs died. That left an unaesthetic gap in the green. Getting another specimen of that size and shade would have been a tall order, so for the sake of symmetry the healthy shrubs were yanked.

Inside the Linnean House the camellia are putting on their annual show. This is prime time, but the dress rehearsal really started in November. Always my favorite: the Yuletide descanso planted at the East end of the House. The flowers on the bottom half of the tree are white with pink accent stripes. The top half has flowers that are a solid pale rose color. The tree reminds me of those intriguing ads that seem to Bloom in the Parade magazine in springtime: "You too can own this remarkable tree that produces oranges, lemons, yes, and even limes.

Ready or not, it's started even without the official pronouncement from Phil the Groundhog. Thoughout the Garden--Hosta Garden, Mausoleum Garden, English Woodland Garden, and the Bird Garden--the snowdrops have begun to bloom, Some are tiny, easy to overlook; most though are the ones called giant snowdrops that say "Here I am. Look at me." And I do. At length. Delicate looking bobbles dangling at the ends of slender stems: the scouts of spring.

I spotted two other early arrivals in the English Woodland Garden, No more than an inch across, I saw the characteristic daisy-petal leaves of the winter aconite. In the center of the collar was a pin prick of yellow set to open when the day warmed.

One advantage of having walked here over the seasons of many years is that I know where to find what the Garden offers. So I checked the patch of hellobores in the English Woodland Garden. Many of the buds are set to open but just one was in flower this morning -- a dirty cream and bleached purple blossom. It was a typical, if not spectacular opening for a season that will last well into spring. What I especially like about the hellobores blossoms is their lack of reticence about staying open, regardless. Unlike snowdrops, aconites, and tulips whose blooms seems to keep banker's hours, the hellebores are more like the web: oopen 24/7.

The quail were out again this week -- two weeks in a row! Again, they fearlessly walked near us. Last week when they got so near I thought I was because Pat and I were being good : we didn't talk and didn't move. This week I suspect something else was really going on. As we aproached the quail, they approached us. Either quail are exceedingly fearless and curious or other visitors have begun to feed them pieces of stale bread intended for the koi in the Japanese Garden. The latter, I'd bet.

For the past few winters, there has always been a catbird living in the winterberry shrub planted as a backdrop to the life-sized statue of Henry Shaw just outside his Tower Grove home. This year though we surprised that no bird had claimed the shrub with its abundant crop of bright red fruit. Then this morning we spotted a catbird perched on Henry Shaw's head. The bird was small; it looked undernourished. One of its legs dangled freely as if the bird had lost muscular control over it. Still it was agile enough to fly from the founder's head to the nearby shrub where it managed to hold on tightly enough to pry off a snack of the berries. Still, I wonder if that little catbird will be able to defend it's territory against more able birds that are sure to come as food becomes more scarce.

Delicate small flowers have opened on the pink and white flowing apricot trees (Prunus mame) in the Chinese Garden. Viewed against the intense blue sky, the pick variety called 'Peggy Clarke' is awesome. Its spicy fragrance is a bonus.

flurries: calm: 29º

This is a day that would please both the naturalist warmed by country fires and the commuter who clutches the wheel whenever nature obscures concrete and asphalt. Last night four inches of snow fell. The temperature hovered around freezing so salt and traffic did all that was needed to keep streets clear. The snow fell straight down--no breeze to shift it off-course. The result was an extraordinary morning at the Garden--quite unlike anything I can remember. Evenly spread, pure white snow covered the ground and each branch and twig of every tree and shrub.

Pat took many pictures; they will help us remember parts of the day, But it was an day to experience, not to record in pictures or words. Every few feet I stopped to turn or to look back, trying to take it all in.

This was a morning meant for photographer too. There were more camera and tripods here than us plain folk. As if to mark the occasion, there was a new yellow sign at the entrance desk to the Garden asking all photographers with tripods to register before going in. In return for a yellow tag to attach to their tripods signifying that they were "official," they were asked to leave their drivers license and to abide by certain rules of courtesy. What the rules are I don't know, but surely some incident happened between a plain person and a tripod owner to trigger the crackdown.

We arrived at the Garden just after 8 a.m. -- fairly late for us. By then, even on this chilly January morning, dozens of others had already walked the paths marveling at the wonder. We were surprised, pleased, and gratified that nowhere had the snow cover been disturbed. No one had ventured off the paths or swept a glove across a bench just for the hell of it or shook a shrub to watch the snow tumble. Most tempting of all to touch would have been the tower of bells that many visitors traditionally ring for good luck. Surprising, none of the dangling strings of bells had been disturbed. The snow was just where it had fallen making the tower look like a huge cotton plant with bolls ripe for picking. We left the tower as we found it. I was tempted to return after our walk to see what time and more visitors had done to it, but decided not to.

"Plants in Bloom," the Garden's weekly of what's in flower, claims that snowdrops are blooming in the Mausoleum Garden as well as in the English Woodland Garden and the Bird Garden. If they are, they're well buried on this day, I can't wait to have a look though. Perhaps next week.

The center area of the Bird Garden is filled with short grasses. Today their graceful arches are covered with a roof of snow. Beneath the grasses and snow are runs and hollowed-out places where a covey of quail nest. We saw them poke their heads out of their grass home and scratch around the ground looking for seeds dropped from the feeding stations high on poles above the grass.

At first, we saw only a couple of birds; then as we stood very still we counted at least 15 (ever try to count quail?). Some were plumpted-up; others with feathers close to their body looked sleek and tiny. We stood there motionless for about fifteen minutes as the birds moved away from their nesting area to a slope across the walk from where we were standing. The procession passed within a foot of us--an extra treat on this morning of special treats.

In a landscape of white, there was a photographer dressed in a "Pretty Woman"-red, full-length coat. It was easy to spot her from a distance as she leaned over her tripod to get a shot of Crane Island in the middle of the lake in the Japanese Garden. The scene reminded me of those pine tree quilts that use triangular pieces in shades of green to form outlines of pine trees. To relieve the eye, the quilt maker puts in one triangle of bright red somewhere to represent a cardinal.