Happy Easter

I hope that the Easter Bunny brings you lots of chocolate for your basket,

Lots of  Flowers for your garden

And much Peace for your heart.

Mellow Yellow in the Garden

What with the magnolia blooming and a few red tulips I was thinking our garden was beginning to look quite lively when my DB made the remark that we have lots of yellow in the garden now. Hmmmmm See there is another color other than yellow. These tulips are only about six inches high. They almost get lost in the bed. I hate to move them because I think they have reproduced here. This area is a difficult area to get anything to grow in.What with the daffodils and the forsythia blooming up a storm there is quite a bit of yellow.Some of the narcissus do throw a shot of orange into the mix.
I hope your weekend is bright despite what the weather might be throwing at you.

Spring Surprise

This beautiful little flower popped up in the front garden this morning. I have no idea what it is. Can anyone help me? There is only one. Hmmmmm Did I forget about something I planted or did a garden fairy plunk one pretty little bulb into this flower bed? It is a very pleasant surprise. Thank you to who ever did this. I hope it multiplies. Now these white hyacinths I remember planting. I had some other colors out here too but they must have given up the good fight in the drought last summer. These white ones held on. I am happy about this too.

Our Magnolia is just begging for a little bit of sun and it will be popping open. I can't wait for the show because it isn't supposed to freeze anytime soon. This year the Magnolia should be spectacular.

It is amazing how each day during the spring warm up something new is budding or blooming every day. I can't wait to get out there tomorrow and see if the forsythia is open. Just a little sunshine is all we need. Did I already say that? About the sunshine I mean. Yes, we need sun.

Tiptoe through the tulips

When we got to the city park this morning for our walk about I thought things were going to be the same ole thing...water water everywhere.... At least I knew we weren't going to sit around and enjoy the view much...





When we walked to the other end of the park we were pleasantly surprised when we found that this magnolia was beginning to bloom. Was it ever a sight for sore eyes. You can just imagine my delight when I saw this pinkish bloom in the gloom. It had lots of these buds just waiting for the sun to coax them into bloom. Aren't these just beautiful? They almost look like a rose ready to unfurl.

I wasn't totally surpised that I found something blooming at the park becasue when we departed from home I saw that there were some tulips up with buds just waiting to be coaxed open with some sunshine.

What I was surprised with was when we arrived home from the park we had tulips open. Whooooo Hoooooo Now this looks like spring time. All we need is a little more sunshine. The sun decided to grace us with its presence for a few hours this afternoon. A most welcome sensation. It is amazing how a little sunshine can raise the spirits and open the blooms. Don't you just love to look down on those little tulips and see them open wide. All we need now are some bees buzzing around. These are our first tulips blooming this spring. They seem to get shorter every year but I don't have the heart to pull them out. They are so cheerful.

Finds in the Garden

I was looking around the garden and found some more galls. Isn't this an interesting gall? It is on a cedar tree. I do wish I knew more about these things. They are very interesting to me.

Do you remember the galls I told you I saw on the Forsythia?? They are quite different than the above gall. They are very lumpy and coarse looking. While the gall above is bumpy but more smooth in texture. The colors vary great too. As you can see the forsythia is budding but no blooms yet. Marvin who seems to know lots about nature and is so kind to impart his knowledge told me that the one on the Forsythia is a Phomopsis Gall. It is a type of fungus. He also told me about this site where you can read about this gall and many other garden maladies. I found here that the creepy aggressive awful grass I wrote about here is a Wild Bermuda Grass. What this site says about it is terrifying to me. It sounds like it will indeed be a fight to keep it out of my flower beds. Sigh~~

There is some weird fungus growing on the trunk of the huge Autumn Olive that we cut down. I was checking on the log planter to see if the little starts I planted in it appeared to be surviving the winter and spotted this fungus. It is a pretty color and texture. Almost velvety yet at the base it looks jelly-like.

I felt very fortunate to have found the bagworms haning on the cedars. I only found three of them. I wonder if there will be more?? You usually don't just find three. We haven't had any bagworms for some time. I hope it is the last of them. I picked them off and threw them away.

I just couldn't resist showing you this fuzzy wuzzy bud of the Magnolia inour garden. The tree is full of them. I hope they don't all get burned off with this cold.
There are still a few of the seedheads of the Clematis 'Ramona'. Iwonder if a person could winter sow them? Has anyone tried this before? We are battening down the hatches today. We are under a Winter Storm Watch. We could get as much as 2-6 inches of snow, rain, sleet etc beginning this afternoon. The Weather Men are always making these announcements and often they aren't near as severe as forcast. So we will just have to wait to see what happens this afternoon.