How is your garden looking today?

the multitude of flowers are a veritable rainbow of color, the grass is not only very green, it's also getting very long and it's soaking wet after a week of fairly continuous rain and the apple trees are in blosson and the dickybirds are randy and noisy.

no bloody cats tho, thank goodness

I think the container flowers are going to keep getting better here. Usually I do the whole impatients and other items, just to do them over again the following year. While I adore my impatients, Im finding great love of the Freesia...it has grown so well, and so quickly that Im just astounded...and pleased. Put it outside to day to get a nice mix of rain and sun.
As for the rest, jury is still out however, they look nice still so, thats a good sign.
Now, as for my poor jade...its doing well, and has some great shoots going on...got some tips about not watering it so much due to the shoot length and hoping to not have hurt the flowering action that it sure to come sometime...I wonder if I should dare put it outside though. You just never know around here, and well, its too sentimental for me to risk it. Still, after re-potting it...it looks lost..LOL. I guess I dont have enough patience for it but, Im trying

from the eastern end of lake ontario : it's been getting warmer the last few days; it's been as high as 22 C . had quite a bit of nice warm rain and tulips, daffodils are showing their colours nicely. as soon as it dries, i'll have to give the lawn a good trim - dandelions are doing well also ! hbg ... my allergies are telling me that the trees and bushes are budding ... achoo !

I bought two clematis roots for the backyard arbour I put in last summer.
They're Violet Charm and Venosa Violacea.

on the purple clematis page at Roseville Farms ... click

I'm really looking forward to getting them started. I brought the pots in for now, as it's too cold for them to overnight yet. I picked up some deep purple and scarlet Morning Glory seeds. The Morning Glories can keep the Clematis company as they're getting started.

My back yard got up and left. It is gone. There is a new wall at the end of it, but all that was growing in there was trampled by buldozers. Nice thing is, we didn't have to pay a cent for the new wall - it was neighbor's wall, and they brought loads of new soil and flattened it out, took away loads of rocks that were everywhere and brought heaps of mulch. So in the end it looks better than it did with the scraggly periwinkle. I am going for grass this time, can't wait. And a big vegetable garden, wahoo. I have a blank page to start at and that is kind of exciting.

The ornamental apple tree out front is in its flowery beauty now. It sprouted from a seed around twenty five years ago, and is close to acquiring the cascading form I've been hoping for.



(added) Take a closer look at the flowers here.
(added) Here is a look at the fruit.

that is lovely, neko!

this morning i put my digicam in my purse - a reminder to take some pix of the garden. did i take any today? not yet. but i will

right now, the little front yard is a bit of a vision in green and white - the lily of the valley, columbine, solomon seal, and dogwood are in fine fettle. The red poppies are in large bud, just waiting for the perfect day to pop. Right after that, the colours in the other plants will start to make an appearance.

A week ago I had to take my window sill garden to my cousins house for tranfrer into the ground before they either died from squashed roots or eith the roots broke the pots they were in.

So now I have replaced them with coleus, aloe, and some cacti.

Last winter was especially hard. It was cold with a sharp wet windy freeze at the end. This winters end dried the tips of many of my trees and burned them to death. At last count I lost
1 flowering crab-windstorm last week wasnt a tornado but damn close

65 arborvitae. The bag worms messed them last summer and the cold did em in

2 sour cherry trees and 1 sweet cherry tree. Is there a blight going around?

2 sand cherries -nice red leafed bushes , all dead.

1 big mimosa. This tree edged a pasrture and , when in bloom in July, it drew zillions of hummingbirds
2 large silver maples just reached the end

we got nailed this year. If nothing else, Ive got all my next years firewood taken care of.


On the good side. We started some new lines of peonies from song sparrow farm two years ago, and last year. We followed their instructions to NOT feed them at planting. The two year olds are blooming with a dozen flowers in each plant . Our old varieties of peonies were actuaally here at the farm when we bought the place over 20 years ago. We found from 2 previous owners thaht they remembered them also.(These owners had the place cumulative of 10 years) so these bushes are probably around 40 or more years old. Peonies are neat and a traditional Memorial Day flower around here. We transplanted a line of these older plants about 10 yeaRS AGO AND THEYVE ADAPTED beautifully. So we got peonies all over the place. Its a real bitch cause in the ;last 2 weeks of May we have Iris,laantern plants, peonies and a few others. The rest of the summer ( at least until we leave for Maine), Ive gotta find some perennials that are another burst of color and mix with annuals. We like color.

farmerman, new annuals for bloom in June/July? Colorful you say? What else? How traditional? What bright colors? What environment?

My yard is shaping up. Much of the dead evergreen leaf and needle is filling out. I have some dead plants (ones that definitely should survive our winters, but that didn't) to yank.

The trillium flowers are dying off, so are the virginia bluebells (this round of flowers), the mini-jacob's ladder is going, but the purple columbine is spreading and blooming like crazy - as is the lily-of-the-valley I planted 2 years ago.

I was just given a load of l-o-t-v that I put in the back yard.

well, my wife likes to make blue and white areas and red areas. We really have a relatively small yard thats surrounded by lots of evergreens that border the pastures , so green is boring. We have one dynamite weeping cherry , so she plants pink evening primrose and we get lots of impatiens in brilliant reds.
We have a couple of garden walkways that need to be filled with short and tall color. We keep marigolds out on the front side of the house. They are, all yellows and oranges and some of the whites..
I like plants that draw butterflies and hummers.. so reds are great. Weve been planting those wave petunias in some big cement planters to droop over the sides. They add a nice spot of interest.
We need something tall and red or pink. I dont care for cosmos , they dont always bloom and if you fertilize too well, they are all feathery green leaves

hmmmm.....

How much light? lots?

mixed, we have shady areas under trees and bright sunny "rooms". Thats what we like, ROOMS in the outside. As I said we actually have a small lawn area because we want more rooms of bushes flowers and textures. One thing I did this past qweekend was to strip all the small branch leaves off a flowereing crab near the house. The leaves are at the ends of branches and the branches form textures of interlocking bare arms that surprise a visitor. Under this tree we have hhosta but we want shade flowers too.
We dont like chaotic mixtures of colors like yellows against reds and blues. We like to keep a theme of each room. Does this make sense?

For tall and pink - I immediately think of mallows and hollyhocks. But, they're leafy. And, maybe too tall?

Medium sized - Poppies come in red and pink and lupine comes in pink.

Have you considered leaf color that isn't green?

It does make sense. I know a lot more about shade plants than I do about sun lovers. I've had almost 5 years here at this place with almost no sun to plant in. But, I think I have very different aesthetics than you 2 have.

Have you cruised the web checking out plant sites for ideas?

tall: gladiolas

medium: astillbe (shade), bleeding heart (pt-shade),

short: tiarella (shade), primrose, bergenia

So much rain. Not enough sun. Interesting.
We had pea-sized hail on Sunday that ripped thru my hosta leaves. It beat up some other plants, too. Don't want to complain about the rain, we've been at a deficit for years, but we could sure use some sunshine now.

have you got any solomons seal, farmerman - they're quite attractive plants for shady areas (mid-size)

how about a variety of lungworts (low-rise) ? i've got some in semi-sun/shade. the texture and pattern of the leaf adds interest after the flowering is done.

campanulas? (campanulas on this page + some other interesting plant ideas - neat site


ohhhhhhhh - my favourite blue flower (i think it's also available in white) - the balloon flower (platycodon)

balloon flower