It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

Ah, spring. Time for wearing the new gardening clogs:



and daffodils:



We're worried about one of our rhododendrons (rhododendra?). Here is the healthy one:



and the not so healthy one:



We might need to take it down. :-(

Does this mean...

we will have blueberries this year?! I certainly hope so!



Every day we come home from work, pull in our driveway, and this is what greets me.



These little guys are on the west side of our front yard, where everything is always a little behind, I think due to lack of sun.



This color combo is my favorite right now, it's hard to capture all of it in a photo, though.

So colorful

I'm loving the color in our beds right about now.









Tulips from Carrie, therefore I will forever call these Carrie Tulips!



Mom says this is Spirea. I don't care what it's called, I love it. I love the teeny, tiny, perfect little flowers.

It's right around the corner...

Today was the day...

that we woke up to the "funk" of the voodoo bulb!





I moved it out to the patio, and we can still smell it out there!

Daffodils and hyacinths are blooming nicely now:







And...I found my vegetable peeler that disappeared last year! Right where Mom said it would be, in the composter. :-)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A little early... but bulbs are starting to poke through! Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths all seem to be making their way out of their winter slumber. Even the hardy mums I put in the ground last Fall have some new growth, so yay!

It was supposed to rain today, but it hasn't...

yet. Now they're saying it will rain overnight and clear out by midday tomorrow. I hope so!

Our backyard smells like heaven for two reasons:



The pear trees are blooming.



and what's that behind that pear tree? Lilacs........



Soon we will have a profusion of money blant blooms! There were a few of these in the yard our first summer in the house, I'm assuming Mrs. Pampalone started them. They are biennials, and bloom the second year. (That's what biennial means, right?) They reseed like mad, and we have them in all sorts of places, in the beds, on the hill, it's all good.



So we have this empty spot where we used to have a Carolina Allspice. Mom doesn't think we should have taken it out, but it creeps into everything and we just didn't love it, so out it went. This lone tulip came up there this year, it must have needed the sun.





Here is what is left of the Silky Dogwood from Lisa and Guy's wedding that the tree guy accidentally cut down this winter. I'm still a little mad about that, but look - new growth! I have hope that it will someday come back and be as big and beautiful as it was before.

It's April, and dry

I had to water the beds earlier this week, we have had 12 straight days now with no rain. Steve surprised me, so I have a funny look on my face, but here I am! It is way to early in the season to be watering...and of course it's supposed to rain this weekend when our book group is coming to hike Dennings Point...grumble, grumble.



Finally - the grape hyacinths out front are catching up with the daffodils. :-) I am an impatient gardener, I tell ya.



I love the front beds right about now. So colorful! I need to add more tulips to fill in where we took out the holly bushes (trees!) last year, and to fill in on the west front corner, it doesn't look nearly as good as the eastern front corner:





This is one of my favorite spots in the backyard right now. I planted the one batch of red tulips two years ago, then added the daffodils and grape hyacinths last fall. That is our second "little white flower" shrub that is just starting to bloom there, too.



And....the azaleas are starting! Yippee!