Busy day in the garden!

Good morning!



One big project I tackled today - the weeds and mint that have taken over the azalea bed on the East side of the house.

Before:


During:


After - there is canna planted in there, and the delphiniums our godson brought us on Saturday:


(The transplanted volunteer sunflowers don't look so good now, but they'll bounce back.)

This coral bell planted itself in a crack of our sidewalk last year, earlier this spring I moved it back into one of our beds, and it is doing great! (Sweet William and Geum in the background)



I put some annuals in pots for out front:





We bought these at a new-to-us garden center, Sabellico, yesterday. That place is *huge!* We will need to go back, they had so many irises! Here is the millet and Toothache Plant:



and the Toothache Plant up close (the tag says you can chew the leaves to numb your gums, yikes.):



Dirty feet are a good sign of a long, exhausting and fulfilling day of gardening. :-)

Pink! and, I wish the Internet had Smell-o-Vision

The pink azaleas out front always bloom after the ones on the side of the house. They are going full force now!



These little guys planted themselves!



Yup, Cilantro!



The Highbush Cranberry from Lisa and Guy's wedding is blooming, and very tall! I would say almost 7 feet.



And this is why I wish the Internet had smell-o-vision - the garden smells so good right now! And, that scent means it's almost Christa's birthday! :-)

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.

We're rich!

Hah! But look at all the money plant / silver dollar plant. These are mixed in throughout almost all our beds, and they all started from one lone plant that must have reseeded itself from Mrs. Pampalone's gardening days.



The azaleas are starting to join the color show.



Look at all the volunteer sunflowers along the bricks! There are more throughout the front and side beds, yay!



Mrs. Pampalone's primroses are starting to bloom.



This was all seen on our way to harvest part of breakfast from our backyard.





Asparagus and eggs. A heavenly combination we learned of last spring...

Azaleas and Herbs

Our azaleas along the east side of the house are blooming, the ones out front are not. I hope we don't miss them completely! We are going to Italy for the next 2 1/2 weeks, and I'm hoping to see some wonderful spring gardents while we are there.

We have a lot of sunflowers growing...we'll thin these out and move the biggest ones to the spots where we really want them to grow.



They've even reseeded along the edge of the sidewalk in front of the azaleas!



This azalea didn't do so well this winter. After it's done blooming we'll cut it back.



This is one of our Hardy Mums from last fall. I finally stopped being lazy and actually put four of them in the ground!



I potted up the herbs: parsley, basil, thyme and cilantro.





This strawberry crawled out of the strawberry pot last summer...



See you in a couple of weeks!

We have compost!

We started composting maybe three years ago, and last year we got a little bit, but this year we hit the compost jackpot! Well, okay, not a jackpot, but that big ole' pot is filled with compost we made. I spread it around some select plants in the perennial beds that I thought could use a little umpf. It's a good thing Steve isn't afraid of the critters that tend to hang out in the composter. Twice I have opened the top to find a snake curled up all cozy on top of the compost. Now I bang on the sides a bit and give whatever is in there a minute to get lost before I open the top.



It doesn't look like much now, but I decided to go with Bleeding Hearts and Columbine in that empty spot where we took out the allspice. How strange that the bleeding hearts are white! I'm assuming that's from being in a box too long while shipping? Steve asked me if I was sure that wasn't the root. Um, yeah, I'm sure! There's a little primrose in front, too, that has been there all along but never blooms. I'm hoping next year it will bloom and spread a bit like the others have now that it has sun.





I was VERY excited to see all this new growth on the silky dogwood! Yay! It might take 10 years, but I'm hopefuly it will grow big and strong again.



The azaleas out front have started blooming. It's pretty cool how we can see how much sun our yard gets. Everything on the west side of the front steps is just a little bit behind everything on the east side of the steps, because the east side gets more sun.

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!

It's too nice out to blog

The grape hyacinths on the east side of the house are in full bloom now. Still waiting for the ones in the front beds to bloom. They'll look great with the new daffodils I planted if they ever catch up!

The hosta and Steve irises are significantly bigger now!

The myrtle is blooming really well this year. I think it's because we lost a big piece of the rhododendron that used to shade this area.

I love this flowering shrub with it's petite white flowers. We actually have two of these - I don't know what they are, they were here when we bought the house. One is in full bloom now, and the other hasn't even started! I don't know why they're not blooming at the same time, but it's nice that they'll be staggered and we'll get to enjoy them even longer.

I'm so excited there are buds on the rhododendron. It had a terrible fungus last year (we saw many others in the neighborhood with the same problem), and we had to cut out big sections and spray, but it seems like it's bouncing back this year.

I am (im)patiently waiting for the azaleas to bloom! We aggressively pruned them last year, and I'm hoping they'll be phenomenol this year! I'll have to do a post when they are in full bloom and show you the before and afters.