I’m disappointed with hyacinths. A few years ago I planted a shocking amount of them in all different colors. Nothing says spring quite like them. Some of the areas looked like giant Easter baskets. This year . . . not so much. Maybe one in 10 are back and with much fewer petals on each stalk. I’m afraid they need to be planted almost every year as if they were annuals.

The same is true of most varieties of tulips. Any of the spectacular ones like Mount Tacoma or Angelique are really just one year. If you wish to have multi-year blooms, stick to the Darwins or the species cultivars. They are usually listed as perennial tulips in the bulb catalogues.

I have a stand of Daydreams which has come back reliably for over 10 years. They are an orange/salmon color with a touch of yellow — my personal favorite alongside the aforementioned purple hyacinths.

I am impressed with the witch hazel on Skiff avenue in Vineyard Haven. It has been blooming for several weeks and looks like a few more might happen. Many of the spring shrubs and bulbs are so quick. My snowdrops came and went in a nano-second. Lucky for me I planted some blue scilla with them so the area made a quick transition from white to blue.

I am a hat wearer. I rarely go out without a wide brim to protect my eyes and skin from the sun. The last several days I have been remiss. I have an impressive sunburn on my face. Live and rarely ever learn. The cool air belies the strength of the spring sun.

I planted out a few flats of onions. They had been hardening off in a protected location for a couple of weeks. I wish them the best as they are pretty tiny out in the big world. I suppose it would be fine to plant onion sets now. After all, they will be underground for a while. My seedlings are not much larger than pencil lead.

I hope to get peas out of their plug trays and into the ground this coming week. I plant all three varieties — sugar snaps, Chinese snow peas and the old standard shelling pea.

I planted Tete de Tete daffodils on the old dog’s grave last fall. They are adorable. The store on Union street around the corner from Leslie’s Drugstore and the new Leroux store has a huge bed of them.

There is an inordinate amount of turkeys wandering around the Skiff avenue neighborhood. There is plenty of courtship behavior holding up traffic. I bet folks don’t need to fertilize their lawns in the area.

I planted a Henry Lauder’s Walking Stick years ago. It is an interesting shrub with twisted and gnarled branches. For some reason mine has no more crooked branches at all and is a plain, boring upright shrub with many straight branches coming from the roots. Obviously, this plant was grafted onto straight root stock but the grafted, twisted branches died. This phenomenon happens often with roses. The desired one dies and the roots put out the original plant which is a muddy red. It is sneaky, however, as the plant looks healthy and great until one day you think, wasn’t that a different color last year?

The grass along the roadsides and in the fields has “greened up” overnight it seems. Hopefully I’ll take a bamboo rake to my own yard soon for some much needed thatching.

What is happening to our world and the one we are leaving our children? Sure, we had an occasional hijacked plane back in the day, but they weren’t flying into buildings. Suicide bombings are becoming as common as mass shooting sprees. Who raises these people?