Something is eating our gerbera daisies. I blame the rabbits. Rabbits are the only rodent who a) are known to live in our yard, b) eat plants, and c) could reach high enough to get at the flowers.
It's kind of a bummer to have all our daisies get chomped, but I can't really be upset about it because I'm still too thrilled that they survived the winter. (The daisies, not the rabbits. Well, the rabbits too.) I thought gerbera daisies were killed by any frost, but apparently they can survive down to 20° F. Which is slightly colder than it ever got last winter. All but two of them came back this year. If I had known they even had a chance of survival, I would have protected them with straw.
Another flower I was surprised to see again this spring was the snapdragons. I always thought they were annuals, but the ones I planted last year came up again and are about to start blooming. I wonder if there's some reason plant stores sell them as annuals. Do they not look as nice in subsequent years? I guess I'll find out soon enough. Seeing as I'm a total cheapskate, they'd have to look pretty bad before I'd rip them out and plant new ones every year.
A lot of "annuals" are actually tender perennials that stick around all year given the right climate. (For example they have 3-foot-tall impatiens plants and 10-foot-tall cannas in Ecuador because they never die back. We had a very mild winter and I don't think the ground ever really froze hard, so I think a lot of annuals were able to last in a dormant state.