How is your garden looking today?

sozobe, Your flowers really looks healthy.

dys, Your garden is really coming along, but I don't 'smell' Keukenhof Garden.

Sorry I wasn't clear c.i., those are the types of plants, but those are not photos I took of my flowers. They're just examples.

I WISH mine looked that great. The cherry and violet million bells aren't so far off, though.

from the wayback machine

One person's garbage is another's treasure.

The deer is happy getting over-run by the day lilies right now. I think it'll look great when they start blooming.

What else is in bloom? <clickable thumbnails>



Dogwood (first bloom this year!)





Solomon's Seal




Bridal Wreath Spirea


and getting ready to bloom





the poppies

rhubarb's ready for harvest (the first season it's been big enough)

Fernleaf peony is now blooming. Got years ago, a couple of tubers in trade for a clump of primulas. I almost choked on my coffee yesterday when I saw the retail price charged by an online dealer.


Zoom out view

That's fantastic, neko.

My peonies have set bud, but are nowhere ready to bloom yet.
I'm looking forward to it - I'm hoping the Sarah Bernhard will bloom at the same time as the Lancome roses again. I love the sort of icy pink against hot hot pink.

Jeez, you're fast, ehbeth; I thought I could get the zoom out link in before it registered as an edit.

I found a pic of my Old Timer christmas cactus in bloom taken a couple of years ago. See the link I added on my last post.

I'm afraid the rose I planted two years ago is now in the dumps. Barely has some leaf. Must give it seme food next year.

Hollyhocks
A single Hollyhock has adopted me. It popped up against my rear yard side fence. When it first appeared, I had no idea what it was and was going to pull it out, thinking it was a weed. But I was curious and left it. Now it is higher than the fence with big bright burgundy flowers. I have no idea where it's seed came from, but I'm glad it found my yard.

Something similar happened last year. I had two volunteer tomato plants pop up in my flower beds. A mystery as to how they managed that.

BBB

The bleeding-heart in the shady corner out back, as of this morning.

(click thumb for zoom-out view)

The whole backyard is now a tapestry of green textures highlighted by colors of late blooming perennials and irises.(inserted by edit) So is the front. See my edit at My Garden Pictures .

Neko... looks gorgeous. Here's a quick walk past my porch last week. That Hellebore just hangs in there... been in flower for months. In the first photo on the far right, past the cross-bracing is where the Katsuras were planted.

Gorgeous as always, neko.

I worked my butt off yesterday. Got 15 56-liter bags of some good, dark, composty mulch (haven't figured out conversion yet -- ~30-40 pounds each?), they loaded them into the car but I unloaded them. Have put down about 2.5 bags, around petunias (which are doing well!) and in the rest of that area. Planted impatiens. Planted snapdragons.

Thanks for showing your place, Piffka; it's close to how I imagined it -- deep woodsy, with the shady conditions that come with a forest setting. What a difference from my subdivision locale! If I were living there I'd probably stick to the west-coast woodland tradition -- flowering shrubs, native perennials, and the nonbearded type irises.... Looking good, looking good.

Sozobe: you make it seem that your place is severely compost-deprived. You do have help, don't you? Avoid the bit of carelessness I commited in injuring myself (falling off a ladder=fractured foot, for example) in doing garden work. Focus on a defined section for the year.
May I suggest considering primulas -- they're easy as sin--here,at least-- which fill in spaces among shrubs and other nooks around the garden so cheerily. Here, for example, under a lilac bush at the end of my developing iris bed. These are from a divided clump, set in last year., and should grow together by the end of the season and make a showy patch of groundcover for that spot.

Wow, Piffka! Hadn't seen those photos when you posted. Lovely.

neko, do I? I'm still very, very clueless, gradually picking things up. My main goal at this point is to as closely replicate the work the (very expensive) gardeners did last year as possible, then go from there. Kind of like learning how to cook, starting with the basics and then getting creative -- but you gotta know the basics first (which I don't.)

So the gardeners used this mulch that they formulated themselves and had various good-for-the-soil things in them, I tried to get something as close to that as possible. Etc.

I don't have help, no. But most of what I'm doing isn't that strenuous in and of itself -- variations of lifting bags (of yard waste, of mulch) is about as bad as it gets, I think. Not many ladders.

Primulas are a wonderful suggestion, thanks so much!

piffka, neko - gorgeous! Such rich, lush gardens. Piffka, plants that are small here, are huge there! I envy that hellebore!

O returned home after a few days and the shad (got to look up the proper name) which looked bad 2 weeks ago was infested with white flies. I freaked and snipped off all affected branches, placed them in a plastic bag and tied it off. I'm not sure what to do! I'll look into treatment and damage control.

ooooohhhh, aaaahhhh

Wow!