I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden. ~ Ruth Stout

OH, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
~ Robert Frost

When spring finally arrives in the north, plants explode with blooms. They know how short our season is and they have a lot to accomplish before another long winter sleep.

Allium karataviens is still blooming. It's a little charmer with leaves almost as wide as the plant is tall.

A few tall, gangly alliums Purple Sensation are still blooming but most have passed to the green seed head stage. The strappy allium leaves are already disappearing and will leave their airy skeleton orbs standing above the lower foliage and blooms.

This is garlic. A bulb from the local farmer's market was pushed into the soil at the feet of Rose de rescht and it thrives and increases every year. I've never dug the bulbs or eaten the garlic. It makes a nice ornamental. After it blooms the nepata will move into its space.




More iris in a rainbow of colors.

These yellow and blue blooms crowd each other like two children wanting attention.

Nepata (cat mint) is everywhere. It hides the bare ankles of taller plants and covers the gravel garden. Its blooms are tiny, not significan, but a three foot wide plant smothered in a million blooms is like a blue mist hovering above the ground. This plant definitely has a work ethic and never stops blooming.

The peonies are just opening so there will be peony photos in the next post.



Wildlife Rumors by Miss B



Let me tell you about the wild time we had last weekend. A starling somehow got into our house. I told my photographer, quick get the camera but she was absolutely frantic and wouldn't listen to me. The bird was flying through the house, crashing into windows and landing on picture frames. We cats (myself included) were racing right behind and leaping to grab it. My photographer fetched a big towel and threw it over the bird. Before we cats could pounce she had that bird scooped up and out of our reach. Very disappointing. If my photographer had only done her job and gotten some good action photos for my wildlife column. Not one photo do we have.

Now she keeps mumbling about bad luck and birds in the house. It was bad luck for cats that we didn't catch the bird. House cats don't get a lot of opportunities.

I need a photographer that stays cool under pressure and does her job. Her job isn't catching birds and setting them free outside.

Some plants just make life easy

Columbines are easy to get along with. Need a bloom for shady places? Columbine does well in partial or open shade. Full sun is fine too. Dry places are good, poor soil and rocks are ok. Colors come in white, red, orange, yellow, blue, pink, wine, and even black. Hummingbirds love them and hummingbirds have very good taste;)

Pinky Winky makes a denser, shorter plant and the blooms face up and out. The Winkys come in several colors and in doubles.

Columbines tend to wander about my garden. Here one year, there the next. I never mind. They are a slender plant that seldom shades out neighbors. They change too, sometimes sporting white and then no white at all. They grow amongst the iris and the roses. I'm trying to persuade them to grow with the foxgloves and the nicotiana.

Tall bearded iris with blooms as lovely as any orchids.



Iris multiply like bunnies. You have three the first year and twendy-three two year later. They aren't difficult to divide but I do tend to put it off. The yellow iris below is one of my favorite. I find iris are ridiculously easy to care for, in fact they need almost no care at all. Give them sun and don't plant them in a wet spot and they will live happily ever after.

Maintenance Note: For those of us who love Autumn Joy and similar sedum but who hate the late season flop--now is the time to prevent it. In May or early June, I cut the stems back by about one half. This results in the plants maturing with a shorter stature which isn't as likely to lay down. The tips that are pruned off can be stuck into growing medium or even into the garden and they will root and make a new plant. If you wait too late to cut sedum back they may not bloom.

Many taller perennials can be treated in the same way to reduce height and help them stand straighter. The blooming schedule is usually a week or so later than unpruned plants.

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises.


(I love that line from Mary Oliver's poem--more below.)




This week the peonies finally make their long awaited appearance. They usually bloom about two weeks earlier just after Memorial Day.

They are so very welcome whenever they choose to bloom.


Last year I added two Shirley Temples to my collection. Most are older varieties. They were planted on the farm before I moved here.
I love the huge doubles, the ones packed with so many petals you can't find the centers. The ones that smell so cloyingly sweet they scent a room when you bring them inside.

The heavy rain and high winds were wreaking so much havoc on the blooms, I cut most of them to enjoy inside. My house is full and so is the office.

Festiva Maxima above white with the red highlights is one of my all time favorites. The dark pink is an old unknown variety. The white below is probably Festiva also.

This fall perhaps I'll research some early bloomers and add them. It would be nice to extend the season a little longer.


I added this yellow iris to mix in some color. I'm not sure of the cultivar, maybe Pure and Simple. It's a stunner with the sun-bright yellow and the graceful ruffles.

















Peonies by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

What's blooming today and a really good book

Hopefully today's blooms will still be standing after last night's storms. It never fails, when the peonies and iris bloom, we always get rain, hail and high winds. Those huge, heavy flowers fill up with water and topple over onto the mud.



I've had this yellow iris for years. One of my favorites.




Below: A photo from some time ago. These tough little columbines will grow anywhere. They have such a delicate bloom but they are tough, drought tolerant very cold hardy.




























Here are a few iris that survived the rain and wind.

A lucky accident that the iris just happen to blend so well with the chives.




This weekend I'm rereading Virginia Lanier's first book Death in Bloodhound Red. If you are a mystery reader and/or a dog lover, you will want to read this wonderful series. Lanier's character, Jo Beth Sidden, is a professional dog trainer who contracts with local law enforcement to search out people lost in the near by Okefenokee Swamp. Her search and rescue missions are usually harrowing. Avoiding quicksand, poisonous snakes, and her murderous ex-husband Bubba are among the challenges she and her dogs face. You will also learn a lot you never knew about tracking with dogs. Sadly, Virginia Lanier passed away a few years ago so her novels are all the more precious because there will never be any more.