The Garden Club is Coming!

The garden club is coming!
Words that used to send me into a flurry of cleaning, weed pulling and trying to make everything picture perfect. Tomorrow, the garden club is coming to our garden. I finally realized after years of Martha Stewartism, that they are not coming to see my perfect garden. They are coming to see spring! And that, we have. Of course, last week was the peak of the redbuds, we still had lots of daffodils, and oh yes, last week was perfect! Next week, there will be thousands of irises, the hostas will all be up, and oh yes, next week, the garden will be perfect!  But let's take a stroll around the garden anyway and see what we have to share tomorrow!

The new Arkansas Black apple tree has blooms! Ok, there is only one cluster, but that means next year there should be many.

Lamiastrum "Yellow Archangel" is a spreading ground cover that is pretty invasive, but it is beautiful in bloom. Especially with lunaria (money plant) blooming in its midst. If you look closely, you can even see the yellow oak pollen covering its leaves!

Speaking of oak pollen, here is one of the culprits. This one is right next to the house and dusts us thoroughly with gold. The oaks are beautiful in bloom, especially in the morning with the highlighting its branches. We will have to rinse off all the garden furniture and deck before company comes or all of our guests will be wearing yellow! Next week we will be covered in falling oak flowers, so it wouldn't be a perfect garden then after all!

Tiarella is pretty in frothy pink, with white violets

Giant Solomon's seal  has hung out its pretty white bells

Jack in the pulpit has bloomed--and look at that, two flowers, and they are both different! What goes on here?

 

Sweet woodruff puts on a dainty show.

Camassia is beautiful in blue.

And the dogwoods are extra beautiful this year!

Of course there are still lilacs, and viburnums, sweetly scenting the air.

Still lots of Virginia bluebells and old-fashioned bleeding heart.

Geranium maculatum, wild geranium, will be showy in the woods along with plenty of wild phlox, which is just now at its most beautiful.

Merry bells are ringing still!

Ajuga is carpeting the ground in blues, whites, and pinks with green, bronze and black leaves.

One of my spring favorites, a shooting star! (Dodecatheon).

There are still penty of daffodils, though the early ones are gone and some of the others are fading a bit but still pretty, like this reverse-color cup.

Emergence! Blue irises are always the first to open, and there will be many of these tomorrow.

Even the dandelions are beautiful. Who says they are just a weed?

There are still lots of flowers going on, on the woods walk Mayapples are knee high with fat bloom buds, and trilliums abound, with the white ones shortly to be succeeded by the nodding red "Wake Robin".

And here are lilies of the valley! These are pink but most of them are white. Another lovely perfume on the spring air.

 

 Green and gold (chrysogonum) create a tapestry under azaleas that will be open tomorrow. 

Hostas are shoving fat stalks up as fast as they can, that rude Wirginia waterleaf is getting ready to redeem itself with puffy blue clusters, heuchera have tall flower stalks, there are violets everywhere in yellow, blues, pinks, reds, whites and purples, and late tulips blooming along with the early irises!

Come on in, Garden club members and friends! There's lots of spring to see, and grilled rainbow trout for dinner!

"Bright coral bells, upon a slender stalk,

Lilies of the valley edge my garden walk.

Oh how I wish

that I could hear them ring,

But that will happen only

when the fairies sing."

--old song