Garden stuff

Quick garden update, mainly for my own self to look at later.  :)

Blue and white hydrangeas are blooming.  The pink hydrangea has buds for the first year ever -- I'm waiting to see what shade of pink the flowers turn out to be!

The roses have been blooming for some time now and they're doing great this year, after their pruning this past winter.

My tomatoes are finally really bushing out, and I have lots of little yellow flowers.  The pepper plants are all still small, but they also have flowers.  The broccoli plants are growing teeny broccolis tucked down inside their giant leaves.

I dug up and replanted the strawberries late this spring.  I figured it would do away with this spring's harvest, and I was mostly right, but I do have a few ripening berries.  We'll see if I can get to them before the bugs, slugs, and whatever else eats them, do.  In the same strawberry bed I planted a different crop that is supposed to bear fruit in the summer.  I don't know if they'll bear this year though.

The blackberry bush is just teeming with blackberries!  I can't wait until they ripen!  I'm also very pleased to see two brand new branches growing very fast, that will provide me with next year's blackberries.  :)

Last but not least!  First garden harvest!

Potatoes from my Walmart potato bucket.  They're pretty small, but they provided a whole lot of happiness to me as I cooked them up and ate them, with a little butter.  :)

April Flowers!

April has been a good month for flowers. I missed getting a picture of the daffodils, which bloomed very early, but I only had a couple anyway.

But here are my tulips.



I swear I used to have several colors, but it seems I only have pink now, and only a few of them. But the irises:



The irises are spreading. They are from bulbs that sat in my shed for over a year before I finally got around to planting them. Hardy. This is the first flower.

The sprawling azalea that came with the house awes me every year. It is the most vibrant, stunning bush on the block. (Although it needs some pruning.)



I planted two new azaleas this year, and although I feared they wouldn't flower until next year, if they even survived, the purple one erupted about two weeks after the mature azalea bloomed.



It's small, just a tight mass of flowers. I love it.

I planted phlox last year under the mature azalea and although the plants lived, they didn't seem to be thriving. I was pleasantly surprised when they all bloomed this year -- little rugs of color.



And last but not least, my roses. The first flower came almost two weeks earlier this year than last year, I believe.



It has been open for about a week and already looks pretty rough, but it endured a couple of strong rain and wind storms. There are plenty more buds on the red rosebush, and the pink bush is budding too. The other two bushes are a little behind but I have faith in them.

The Price of Vanity

It's a gorgeous day so I broke out the new heels. I love how they look but OUCH.

Spring in the air

A two hour drive, all by yourself, on a sunny spring day, great music on the radio, sunglasses on, highway driving and no traffic problems -- priceless. I got two of those this weekend as I drove to and from a quiet girls' weekend "away from it all." Refreshing!



I hope the spring temperatures are here to stay. I'm hoping to get the garden area tilled next weekend, and I've got seeds that need to be started indoors. Trying not to be super ambitious this year with the garden, but I definitely want to do more than I managed the past couple of years. I'm planning to plant tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and beans, plus lettuce and salad greens and then maybe one or two surprises. In addition I want to do some kind of landscaping in front of the house. That's definitely a big enough goal for this year.