Spring is such a busy time of the year. The first big flush of bloom in the garden also coincides with lots of work: Planning, planting, and weeding.

Weeding gets harder when some of the weeds have really beautiful flowers; unless it's a clematis or a columbine, almost anything in the buttercup family might qualify. These marsh marigolds (Caltha sp.) are all over our lower garden. Each one has a root that looks like a ball of rice kernels; look at that root the wrong way and it shatters. But they're pretty harmless so I leave them be. 

Some people might protest at me calling borage a weed. That's because they haven't gardened in the Mediterranean. Here, borage would be the only thing in the spring garden if I let it. But then again, even knowing the risk, who can resist letting anything that produces a flower of this color grow, especially after a long gray winter?

Lunaria is so well known for its coin-like seedpods that people sometimes forget it has nice flowers as well! It's like a lower-story mimic of dame's rocket (Hesperis matronalis),  one of my favorite weedy plants back in Seattle which I have been unable to even germinate here....

Istanbul is the first place I've been able to reliably grow Freesias outside. This is a beauty, though the lavender ones tend to have almost no scent. 

Pacific Coast Iris are one of my weak spots. This seedling of an unidentified white hybrid is blooming for the first time here. 

Cerinthe major purpurascens first hit the market with a bang about fifteen years ago, and was a plant that everybody had to have. I still do have to have it! Most of the color is actually in the bracts. 

Osteospermum blooms throughout the summer if it's kept watered. In my garden, it's usally not kept watered, so to me it counts as a spring flower! 

 I'm not sure what this flower is. Everyone seems to grow it here; it has tough, stiff foliage almost like a Cistus, which it obviously has absolutely nothing to do with. Unfortunately when it spreads, it tends to die out in the middle, forming rings of greenery and blooms around a mass of bare stems in the middle.

Geranium macrorrhizum is an old favorite of mine. It is almost wrong to call it a spring flower, as it starts in the middle of winter or even earlier, but spring is when it really flushes out. It's an important medicinal plant in Bulgaria. 

Another Freesia - My Freesias were a gift from my friend Peggy in Berkeley, where they are also practically a weed. All I can is, with weeds like that, who needs anything else? Unlike the lavender one, this red and yellow one is intoxicatingly fragrant. It's now in a vase across the room and I can smell it from where I'm sitting!

A rather odd borage relative is Trachystemon orientalis, known (appropriately, rather oddly) as Abraham-Isaac-Jacob, is better known as a food plant in Turkey than something that one would grow in the garden. You have to get up close to really appreciate the flowers but even if it didn't flower it would be worthwhile with its tough, long-lasting heart-shaped leaves and drought tolerance. My start came from the local market, where people sell it as a vegetable.

You can never have too many Narcissus. My absolute favorite Henry Mitchell quote, from The Essential Earthman, has to do with Narcissus:
"Most of my daffodils have sever defects, by show standards, but then they make a brave show all the same. I have several that are to my eye distinctly ugly, but I like them too. One is a bicolor trumpet, white perianth with a really gross megaphone sticking out in intense neon-lemon, frilled to beat the band, like a whore on Easter. I never saw anything quite like it."

Botanically, Turkey is one of the richest countries in the world, because it has so many different climatic zones and is at the crossroads of two continents with very different environments. Istanbul is a cement sprawl but just off its Asian coast are the Prince's Islands, a green refuge from the city. "Karabas" (Karabash - Lavandula stoechas) is  common on the islands. Ladies pick the "flag" petals on the top for making jam. It tastes...strange...but it's very pretty.

 For me, some plants' appeal comes from their strangeness more than breathtaking beauty. This parasitic Orobanche (Broom-rape) was growing under shrubs on Kinaliada, the first of the Prince's Islands. This is likely two different species. They fall squarely into the "wouldn't grow it but I'm glad it's there" category.

Some plants are so weedy that even exquisite flowers don't charm me enough to allow it in the garden. And to be honest, this Echium is a ratty looking thing, but with the right angle and proximity, it still makes a good photo. 

Flowers per se aren't the only joy of spring. To my mind some plants, like this beautiful Verbascum (mullein) species, also on the islands, are at their absolute peak in spring. It will send up a single yellow spike, pretty but not awe inspiring like some of the other species.

 This little wild geranium species came from the hills around the town of Iznik, and is one of the few plants that truly thrives in the very alkaline soil right by the retaining walls around my garden.  

 Most of these pictures were taken in my own garden in Anadoluhisari, Istanbul; the rest are wild plants on the island of Kinaliada, one of the Prince's Islands off Istanbul's Asian coast.