All Grown Up! The Air of Spring, More Flowers and Insects

They grow up so fast! We waited so long, and finally there they were, turning up their cute little faces, so delicate and tiny and full of hope. We were so eager to see them grow, to become everything that they could be. Seems like only yesterday that they were beginning to blossom into their full potential (wait, it was just yesterday!) A little rain and a few hours of sunshine and all those baby plants have shot up to six times their cuteness, had sex, procreated and are now literally tossing their progeny to the winds. And just look at them! Violets a foot tall or more, crested with crowns of seed pods, daffodils two feet tall (or they would be if they hadn't gotten lazy and laid down all over their neighbors)

This was a problem last year, as some clumps have a hundred or more bulbs and cover quite an area with ripening leaves, so I experimented this spring to see if I could control this daffodil habit of sprawling and smothering everything else in the vicinity. I made cages for some of the clumps as they were coming up, using whatever I had on hand:  tomato cages cut in half and upended over emerging shoots, pieces of left-over fencing and 2x4 wire, made into circles and poked into the ground. This method helped a lot with the daffodils that were thus contained. They have mostly stayed upright and in check. As the wire I used was somewhat rusty, it is almost invisible under the foliage. Next year I am going to try to cage all the clumps that share beds with other plants!

If you look carefully at the lower part of this clump you can just see the wire tomato cage.

Lunaria is three feet tall, blooming wantonly all over the place, shoving its bed mates over without a thought. I nearly got bumped in the nose by a hesperis shooting up its buds while I was weeding near it. (OK, so I might have made that up.)

And those weeds! Where did those two foot tall wild lettuces come from all of a sudden, and isn't that poke over there in the middle of the hostas? And I do believe all that group of echinaceas are not really all echinaceas! What IS that big thing over there in the herb garden? It wasn't there yesterday. It might not even have been there this morning! I don't dare stand still too close to the honeysuckle, I think it might be aiming to wind me up in its waving tentacles. Tendrils. Whatever. My compost pile is so full, stuff is falling off and I have resorted to tossing clippings and weeds on top of the brush pile, and over the fence Out Beyond.

The garden is lush and beautiful, in spite of the weeds. This is an azalea, one of half a dozen that I got at $2 each from Lowe's early this spring. It is an unnamed variety, but gorgeous! I also have other varieties in white, peach, lavender and red.

False solomon's seal is finally blooming.

Just taking a breath outdoors is wonderful right now. The lilies of the valley are wafting perfume for yards around, a ferny euphorbia is honey-scented as I work near it, and there are still lilacs.. Out in the woods, deciduous holly is has a sweet, musky odor, woodland phlox is heavenly, and I just noticed today that honesty (lunaria) has a delicate aroma that you have to have your nose right into (but look out for bumble bees!) or you'll miss it. Black locust (robinia pseudoacacia)  dangles its white clusters over our heads with a tantalizing scent. The pale blue antique irises are beginning to open along the walk to the mailbox and are filling the air with the smell of Grape Nehi soda that takes me back to hot summer days and country stores of my childhood.

Grape Nehi iris.

Honey-scented euphorbia. No wonder the bees love this!

A patch of this wild camassia  found growing Out Beyond last year has more than doubled its size this spring. I've successfully transplanted a few of them into the woods and a colony of seedlings has started there.

Japanese roof iris (iris tectorum) is a beautiful spectacle in whites and blues.

Hardy orchid (bletilla) is beautiful! I see this one has been slightly chewed on a couple of petals by something, but who really expects perfection in a garden anyway!

Lamiastrum "Herman's Pride" is a glory in the spring garden, and well-behaved in clump form, unlike its similar but invasive cousin, "Yellow Archangel". Pretty with hostas, ferns and bleeding hearts in the shade garden.

The last daffodils of spring, a delicate white multiflora.

Here's a seedy fellow. On a rainy "bad hair day" a dandelion puff sports a spikey "do".

Looking equally as stylish is a pasque flower (anemone pulsatilla) seed head.

Another spikey fellow, this leopard moth caterpillar was hiding under a rotten log. It curled up into a stuborn ball and wouldn't look at me! It is a good 4 inches long and fat as my thumb. These caterpillars overwinter in rotten logs and under leaf litter and feed in the spring on cherry, dandelion, violets, oak, and plantains, among others. There should be plenty for it to eat around here!

And the last picture of the day, a pretty skipper visits Star of Bethlehem (ornithogalum).

"I was rich in flowers and trees,

Hummingbirds and honeybees."

--Whittier

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