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

Fertility Rites, Going to Seed and What a Difference A Day Makes

Spring is a wanton, wild, virile, fertile time of the year. Sex is everywhere. Birds are mating, nesting in every available tree and shrub.  Butterflies are emerging from over-wintered chrysalises, bees and wasps are pollinating everything in sight, and squirrels are chasing each other in wild leaping abandon across treetops and over roofs. Frogs and toads are singing, full of it, until every square foot of water is full of gelatinous ropes of eggs, and black with tadpoles and polliwogs. And the flowers! They are ALL about sex, flaunting their spring wardrobes, their only be-all for existence to make seeds,to fling them to the winds and chance, spreading their kind far and wide. Many of the spring flowers haven't wasted any time, either! They have already bloomed and are ready to send out seeds to conquer the world, one at a time!

Bloodroot (sanguinaria canadensis) almost at bursting point, looking out for new territory

Celandine poppy, (Stylophorum diphyllum), getting ready to claim new real estate

Daffodil seed pod--planning for the future, 5-6 years from seed to bloom! They also increase by division of bulbs, but the seeds get scattered at quite a distance and start new clumps away from their parents.  Sometimes one old clump will have neary a hundred bulbs! (background leaves are false Solomon's seal, smilacina racemosa)

This is kinda fuzzy! There are hundreds of these, adder's tongue, (Erythronium Americanum) on the march to cover as much new ground as possible, both with seeds and division of bulbs. ! Here's another that will be several years from seed to bloom; making huge colonies of plants with single leaves, that only show themselves for about a month in spring until they disappear until next year.

Hellebores have their seed pods set already! This is Helleborus Niger, the so-called Christmas Rose.

Something seems to have changed in the woods this year. More exuberant, maybe, surely more fertile. I think the woods has undergone a change in dynamics.I'm not sure just what the cause is. Possibly climate change, perhaps it's the rooting out of all that honeysuckle that used to cover nearly every square foot of the ground except where the wildflowers grow so closely interplanted that not an inch of ground shows between them.

Yellow corydalis, ( Corydalis flavula) "colonizes nicely" as they say in the seed catalogs, but it is a dainty, ferny plant that is always welcome wherever it shows up.  An old name for it is "yellow fumitory".

Or perhaps it was the dry creek and re-routing of major paths. Whatever the cause, and maybe all of the above; as I work around pulling weeds, small trees and honeysuckle bits that I've missed, I'm finding all sorts of small wildflower seedlings where there were none before. Some are more than 50 ' away from the original

stands; bloodroot, trilliums, dutchman's breeches, ginger, virginia bluebells hundreds of feet from any other colony; even tiny woodsia ferns barely an inch tall.  One hellebore seedling somehow found its way down to the bottom of the woods. It seems with the honeysuckle gone, all these plants have the freedom to go exploring and stake out new territory! I must be careful where I step so I don't crush these baby colonies. I love to see them spread like that! In a few years, they will carpet the entire forest floor.

I have planted masses of lysmachias,(two kinds), Virginia waterleaf, common daylilies and a chrysanthemum that reseeds as well as spreads by stolons, in the bottom of the woods, all together. I'll let them fight it out for territory as they are all greedy and aggressive claimers of property. If they can live together it ought to be a colorful spot! There's nothing else down there for them to crowd out except a few irises, so we'll see.

What a difference a day makes!

There are surprises every day in a spring woodland garden! As I wander around down there peeking under leaves and and peering around trees, I find all kinds of things that weren't there yesterday.

White trillium (trillium grandiflorum) I always look anxiously for these as they come up later than the other trilliums, but they always come back, and sometimes there is a new one where there wasn't last year!

Yellow trillium (trillium luteum)

Here comes Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)!

One of my favorites, hardy orchid (bletilla striata) in bud. They will be blooming next week.

The deer ate the first flowers of pasque flower (anemone pulsatilla) but they put out some more! I covered them with an up-ended flower pot tonight as the deer were lurking in the meadow Out Beyond waiting for me to leave so they could have their way with my plants! I guess the clover and lespedeza that grow in the meadow aren't tasty enough for them.

Merry bells or bellwort (uvularia)

Bird's foot violets (viola pedata), one of my favorite violets. This violet is a prairie plant and loves full sun.

Jacob's ladder (Polemonium) I wouldn't be without this pretty, dainty blue.

Tritellia (lpheion uniflorum) This is a little bulb that will spread willingly and wantonly, and last for weeks in the spring garden, well into May. Its beautiful blue flowers seem to glow in the dusk.

Woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata) Can be any shade of blue, sometimes pinkish or white. Strongly perfumed and blooms for a long time. Lots of cultivars but they still mostly look just like this wild one!

Flowering almond (Prunus glandulosa) Wonderful flowering shrub! The one that grows here came with the garden and is probably 10' across.

Viburnum Carlessi Korean Spice. Can't you just smell this? Wonderful!

Combine this old-fashioned lilac with the above viburnum and it is fragrance heaven!

Praiie Fire crab (Malus "Prairie Fire") Today it's in bloom! 

What is tomorrow going to bring? I can't wait to get out in the garden!

"With fields full of clover and the apple trees,

The rosy richness of a springtime breeze,

I forgot all the work I'd planned to do

And just loafed in the meadow till

The day was through."

--Edna B. Hawkins

Spring Images from My Garden

Looks like Spring is finally here to stay! Anemone blanda is such a beautiful blue!

Pee-a-boo! Dogwoods are ready to bloom!

What a fluffy daffodil! Don't remember the variety.

Pretty combination of burros's tail sedum and grape hyacinth

Mayapples undurling their umbrellas

Adder's tongue in the woods

Dandelions may be a weed to some, but they have a beautiful bloom!

Pasque Flower

Isn't this a cute little guy? He and about a dozen others serenaded me all afternoon while I worked in the garden. He was the only one I could get to pose for me!