While I was sitting on the porch swing I saw a bird fly into my Mml Franziska Krueger rose that is situated at the corner of the house. I went to investigate and found a nest in the shrub. I startled the bird, which was a cardinal, and she flew off. Four tiny light blue eggs speckled brown. I stayed away after that, but occasionally peeked from afar and saw the little mother sitting on her nest. I hope Cosmo or some other cat doesn't get her little babies!
The tiny little plantlets of Illustris Colocasia that I planted in several of my new beds in the Star Garden are looking healthy, though still small.
The spigelia marilandica, also known as Indian Pinks, that I bought on sale last winter, totally dormant at the time, have sprouted! I have them planted in one of my new beds in the Star Garden. I'm very excited about that. Buying dormant plants can be a little risky. I have had more than a few dormant plants never sprout - they were dead, not dormant. By then so much time has passed that you can't return them for a refund. But these sprouted. Yay!
The hops vines that Josh gave me two years ago have tendrils that have crept halfway up the goat wire arbor at the entrance to Max's Garden. The other hops plant that survived the grueling summer is just breaking dormancy. It is planted on the arbor next to the Veilchanblau Rose.
Root Beer plant is springing up everywhere. It spreads like crazy. Really pretty, but pesky. I am constantly pulling it up out of paths and away from other plants.
I started collecting the seeds from my poppies that have gone to seed. There are still a few blooming, but most of them have formed seed heads, not yet dried out. The past several years something has been eating the seed heads before I get a chance to collect the seeds. Kind of strange, not sure what is eating them. The seed pods are large, so I can't imagine what could be eating them - insect, mammal?
I planted some sweet potato slips yesterday that I received in the mail from Burpee's. They were left in the mail box for several days, they look pretty worse for wear. But I planted them all. We'll see how they do.
The cannas are all about knee and waist high. I have yellow, peach, hot pink, and red cannas in the Star Garden. I really like cannas. I love the flowers, but I particularly love the big, banana-like leaves.
I spotted some Catchfly in the Rose Garden that has just started to bloom. The flowers are hot pink. I've never grown it before, so I am seeing the flowers for the first time. I have lots of plants in the Star Garden and the Orchard, so I hope it's pretty!
There are buds on my blue and pink Vitex shrubs.
The Love-In-A-Mist flowers are at the beginning of their bloom time. I love them. I do not have any pink ones blooming, only white and blue. Last year I had lots of pink ones. They may bloom later, I hope so.
I planted some Castor seeds in the Star Garden here and there wherever there were bare patches of earth. That will probably end up to be a nuisance, but I did it anyway because I gathered a bunch of seeds from last year's planting.
All of the plants that I moved away from the pool area and into various flowerbeds in the Star Garden and the back flowerbeds are doing very well. Of course, it would be difficult to fail with lantana. But the day lilies, the cigar plant, the cannas all are thriving in their new homes.
The Anacancho Orchid Tree in the Star Garden is not really doing well. But it is planted in one of the flowerbeds that I split up last winter. Hopefully I can nurse it to health now that I can get near it. I will watch it and fertilize it, and maybe it will get happy this summer.
Thanks to an extremely wet April, the purple homestead verbena and the skullcap that I planted last month are still alive. It's so helpful when the weather helps me out.
In the fall I'm going to plant a bunch of shrubs in the Long Border. I don't have enough foundation plants. And plants that I considered foundation plantings really aren't getting big enough to earn their keep, for example, the huge crinums that my sister gave me. They, despite their size, should have been planted in the middle row. Of course they cannot be moved now - forget about digging up a crinum, it's not happening. But I will plant something in front of it. And the cannas along the fence line have to be dug up and moved to the middle of the border. They don't get tall enough, and they don't get enough water to become aggressively large.
It's time to buy a load of mulch, not like my soft leaf mulch, but real pine bark mulch that will smother everything. The Long Border needs some serious attention and weed prevention. Luckily, a thick layer of mulch and some large shrub plantings should cure the problem. That will have to be my summer project. I need to buy the mulch and use it as I weed. Weed, mulch, weed, mulch. The Orchard could use it too. $500, here I come.
Sprinkled Sevin dust on my eggplants and bell peppers. Couldn't be helped. I can't watch them every day and pick worms off the plants.
There are buds on my Althea shrubs. In the blue Althea bed there are lots of Turnera seedlings coming up from last year's plantings. I was hoping and expecting that. I was growing the turnera that is a soft butter yellow with the brown eye, my favorite compared to the bright yellow variety.
All the gingers are quite tall now except for the pine cone variety - that one breaks dormancy late - they haven't even popped up yet. The gingers are tall, but they have not filled out yet. That will happen over the next month.
The bees are extremely active now, and have been for weeks. In the evening they cover the front of the hive in a solid mass of brown as they wait their turn to go into the hive (at least that's what I like to imagine they are doing). A little disconcerting, I admit, to see that many bees massed in one spot. I'm expecting a great crop of honey this June because the weather has been so favorable. Exciting.
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