Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Tuesday afternoon in the garden

Just grabbed my camera and took a stroll around our little half-acre. Click on the pics if you want to make them bigger.

In this first photo you can see a small wedge of the sun-dappled front garden. Those are pink dogwood blossoms at the top left and a not-quite-ready-to-bloom Zepherine Drouhin rose in the center. The daffodil foliage (in the foreground) is beginning to look a little messy, but it will soon be hidden by the other plants coming up around it.

The copper "sculpture" is actually a spinning sprinkler. And that wave of tiny blue flowers is brunnera, which would take over the whole garden if we let it.

We bought two new rose bushes last night because there's no such thing as too many roses in a garden. Here they sit, waiting for somebody to grab a shovel and plant them.

This is my hunk o' burnin' love's favorite daydreaming spot. That's a pale purple Korean lilac blooming in the foreground.

Bleeding heart is my favorite spring-bloomer. These little pink necklaces are already beginning to fade, but that just means warm weather is on the way. And hot sunshine will bring the roses!

The sun was playing peek-a-boo, so this photo is horribly overexposed, but I wanted to show off these exuberant primroses. Using an old birdbath as a planter has turned out to be one of my better gardening ideas, so when the hot summer sun saps the strength from these beauties, I'll yank them out and plant something else in their place.

I took this photo last week, but the dogwoods are still dressed in this pretty pink. I love being able to see them (and a good chunk of the front garden) from my dining-room windows.

That's it for now. I'm going back out to the garden to pull a couple of weeds and do a little watering...

6 comments:

Carol said...

I love your garden. It must be a tremendous amount of work to keep your yard looking so beautiful. Thanks for sharing your pictures.

Last week I ripped out about two-thirds of the weeds that took over the area set aside for my garden, and I'm planting grass there!

Carol

Nell Dixon said...

Lovely pictures.

The Writer Resource Pit: said...

Hi Brenda:

Very creative looking blog. I read your bio. and I'm very impressed with your testimony. As yourself, I am a believer and my goal is to eventually publish a book on evangelism. However, right now I'm focusing on motherhood and doing small writing projects like blogging and e-zine articles that will help me to get my name out there.

I wish you the very best and hope we can stay in touch.

Sincerely,
Tiffany Godfrey, The Resource Writer
www.resourcewriting.com

Brenda Coulter said...

Carol, I don't do as much work in the garden as you're probably assuming. Lots of shortcuts for me! For one thing, I don't fuss with seeds. Planting something new is a simple matter of pushing some mulch aside, digging a hole, tossing in a scoop of compost for luck, and then tucking in a nice nursery-grown perennial plant. I refuse to fuss over seedlings or spend endless days weeding plots of bare dirt. Just deadhead flowers that need it, pluck a stray weed here or then, then cut everything back in the fall and wait for it all to pop back up in the spring. For extra flowers and color, I pot up bunches of nursery-grown annuals. That's much quicker and easier than putting them in the ground, and the bonus is that I can move the pots around as much as I like.

Thanks, Nell. Glad you enjoyed the pics.

Tiffany, thanks for stopping by. Wishing you all the best.

Terra said...

You are a gardening romantic, like me. The primroses in the birdbath are so bright and perky, and I want bleeding hearts.
I did plant lily of the valley this year, which I associate with bleeding hearts.
You have a pretty garden. I blog about gardening, and also write for magazines about flowers and such.

Brenda Coulter said...

Hi, Terra. I think I "recognize" you from Twitter. Thanks for stopping by.

Yes, I have all of the old-fashioned flowers. Lily-of-the-valley and violets, columbines and delphiniums, Jack-in-the-pulpit, foxgloves, pansies, peonies, lilacs, plus lots and lots of roses and lilies...

Well. I'm getting myself all excited. Excuse me, I have to go out to the garden now.
;-)