Spring Flowers

Before summer officially begins, I thought it would be good to showcase the Spring flowers we have here around the house.

Admittedly, I didn't put a lot of time into the gardens and lawns we have on our property this past Fall/Winter/Spring. It's not like we have a castle-sized lot or anything, but we do have a full acre and much of it is fully landscaped. The majority of the plants and flowers we do have are hearty perennials and as a bonus, the elk don't seem to bother them too much. And the vegetable / flower / herb / berry patches we have seem to take care of themselves (can you kill rhubarb?). Regardless, we plan, this October, to overhaul the lawn, fill in patches/holes the elk have made and re-do the vegetable/flower beds altogether. I foresee a lot of work ahead of me and A LOT of trips to the Home Depot.

One of two White Rhodendrons we have. Overall, I think we have about 30 individual rhodies, all different colors. The colors bloom at different intervals but around June 1, they're all in some stage of bloom.

A traditional purple rhodedendron

The stairs from the house to the "triangle garden"

Staircase again. There's a Japanese Maple in there too - it appears to be around 20-25 years old.

My pooch Scott posing with the poppies and alium. These flowers share the same bed with the very few garden veggies I invested in this year - tomatoes, Swiss chard, pepper, basil and a bunch of cucumbers since those grew so well last year. We have two other beds in this Triangle Garden as well for vegetables but I just didn't put the work into them so I've let them go wild this season.

Rhubarb, sage, rosemary, red current, raspberry, mint and a variety of other herbs all in this zone (oh, and a bunch of weeds too)

More pink rhodies... I like them though. They're tropical looking and it makes me think I live in Hawaii.

This is part of the main lawn. When we moved in there was a litlte garden already established in the middle of the yard. Last year, Jerill totally redid it - added rocks and beauty bark and now we have heather, a baby oak tree and a plant I call "lambs ears" in there.

This is our lower yard. It a lawn about 200 feet long and 40 feet wide. Once it's fenced I will build some traditional dog agility equipment for Mattie and if they're up to, Lucky and Scott can run through some tunnels too. You can see most of the fence posts are in, just waiting to link it all together with the rest of the yard!

I liked this plant at the nursery and bought it new this year. It's one plant but the blooms are different colors. It's supposed to attract hummingbirds, which we have a lot of but they seem to be most interested in my homemade raw-sugar mix I put out in those red hummingbird feeders you can get at the store.