April Showers Bring May Flowers

Look at all the beautiful blooms I found on my Saturday morning stroll thru the yard. Can you believe that the blooms above are on a redbud bushing tree?? Most of its blooms got frozen during the blizzard. The silly thing has had a handful of blooms for the last several weeks! I keep thinking that it will stop, but there continue to be different blooms coming and going!

Don't remember where I got these pinkish iris from. But I gave several rhizomes to our minister's wife and they have now spread all along the south wall of the church! The yellow flowers are perennial snapdragons given to me by a patient of mine.

The orange honeysuckle has really taken off. Am hoping to see some hummingbirds in them one of these days!! I just wish it was fragrant.

These came from the house next door--I'm sure they have been around for many years!

Look at these beautiful iris. I got a small clump of the peach ones from my mom several years ago. This group was put into a bed created to be home to some dwarf Alberta spruce trees and Zuni crapemyrtle bushes. 2 small crowns are out of control with blooms. The purple and peach combination is a reblooming iris--has yet to rebloom. Behind it is an old fashioned spirea bush (actually 3 of them) that I stole from my mother-in-laws hedge 3 years ago. We also just mulched all that area into a large bed last fall. We put 3 blue spruce trees in there (supposed to be tall and skinny) and then I proceeded to dig out my 3 dwarf burning bushes and my butterfly bush. I can not believe how much better those bushes are doing since we moved them around. The burning bushes have hardly grown a bit since we got them 4 or 5 years ago. WOW--they are going to town now!

Here is some of our lettuce blend. Won't be much longer! I also got the cilantro and dill seedlings planted. I finally decided to put both those herbs into my west flower bed. Thought that was the best place to keep them well watered. They will also be able to reseed there with out being disturbed. Hope it works. I had eaten some kind of Mexican salad in a restaurant a while back and they had sprinkled cilantro leaves into the salad--That was a wonderful palate pleaser. So am looking forward to trying that out. I also hope to dry some of the leaves to put into some Mexican dip mixes that I like to make at Christmas for teacher gifts. The dill?? I am horrible at dill pickles--I just wanted to grow it for the butterflies!! J just rolls his eyes!! Speaking of butterflies, I started some butterfly weed in the basement this winter. I planted that several weeks ago and noticed the other day that something was eating it. I caught the monarch caterpillars in the act. Please forgive me--I squished them both. I can hardly grow their native host plants for them to carry out their life cycle if they are going to eat them before they even have a chance to multiply! Obviously they like them. I think the plant roots are deep enough now that they look like they will be ok!

Here is a picture of my blooming pyrocanthus bush. It has orange berries in the fall. I was looking around this afternoon noticing that there are several bushes in their third year here. This is the year they should really grow by leaps and bounds! Can't wait to watch it happen!

We got the backs shaped for our chairs this afternoon. And are hoping to attach the back to the bottom with the arms tomorrow afternoon. They are looking good. The boys got to do a little prairie dog hunting today too. They were excited. The boys worked on weeding in the garden a little this afternoon. Too much wind to mulch it in with newspapers. Hopefully some evening this week. Can't believe that school is out on Friday! WOW! Where does the time go? We're expecting a warmer day tomorrow! Can't wait!