How close are your earliest bloomers to your front door?   Your crocus, snowdrops, iris, daffodils, tulips, forsythia, daphnes, and magnolias.   When I redid my front garden last year, the designer had put all my earliest bloomers right near the front porch and walk.  When I asked her reasoning, she reminded me of our long winters. Her advice was spot on: When spring finally arrives, it's much more pleasurable to have those earliest blooms where you can see them first thing.     Brevities #OTD It's the birthday of Eugene Delacroix born on this day in 1798. Delacroix is widely considered as one of the last great history painters. A son of France, he received his artistic training in Paris and was a major figure among the French Romance painters of the 19th century. His striking 'A Vase of Flowers' (1833) shows a crystal vase filled mostly with dahlias. It is his earliest surviving flower painting.   #OTD American physicist Charles Townes sat on a park bench on this day in 1951 and came up with the theory that would lead to the laser.     He recalled, "I woke up early in the morning and sat in the park. It was a beautiful day and the flowers were blooming."   #OTD It's the birthday of Irma Franzen-Heinrichsdorff, a German-born landscape architect. In 1913, she attended the Elmwood School of Gardening. In the 1980's she recounted the experience in ten handwritten pages. Here's an excerpt: At 10:15  we went outside and did the currently necessary work in the fruit, vegetable or flower garden.   Every kind of vegetable was cultivated. Countless flowers were multiplied through seeds, cuttings, etc. to be sold in the spring or fall.   The morning hours passed quickly. At 1 o'clock we stopped work. At 1:30 we had lunch, and at 2:30 we went back to work until 4:30. We then drank tea and at 7 o'clock we appeared in festive evening dress for dinner. In the summer we had the same hours of work except for an extra hour in our greenhouse from 7 to 8 o'clock to water and spray our thirsty plants.   But I must add, even if it means praising ourselves, that we did not content ourselves with the times I indicated.  We were often found in the garden at 6 o'clock if not at 5 o'clock or even earlier.  Also in the evenings we preferred to be active outside. Miss Wheeler had never had students as eager as we were.   #OTD John James Audubon was born in Haiti on this day in 1785.    Audobon said, “A true conservationist…knows the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children”  A naturalist and a lover of birds, The Ottowa Daily Republic published a charming story about his burial.  "John J. Audobon, the naturalist and bird lover, is buried in Trinity, cemetery. There has been erected over his grave an Iona cross; the arms of which are connected by a circular band of stone, making apertures of the four corners at the intersection.   In one of these, (apertures) robins built a nest last month. This fell under the eye of a caretaker, who got a pole and dislodged the nest. The birds flew about disconsolately for a time, then went away.   So far as any one knows, Audubon did not turn over in his grave, neither did any of the carved birds on the [cross] cry out."   #OTD in 1822 visionary 19th century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted is born.   He was born to a prosperous family in Hartford, Connecticut. Aside from his legacy as a landscape architect, Olmsted dedicated his entire life to social reform.  In many ways, his designs for public spaces played an important role in his social work.  His vision for Central Park was an ordered oasis for all of the city’s social classes; where everyone could come together and enjoy nature.   Dubbed the Nation's Foremost Parkmaker, Olmsted designed Boston's Emerald Necklace, Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts and and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.    Considered the father of American landscape architecture, he situated his design firm in Brookline and named it Fairsted -