Spring color ...

This year, the flowering trees and bushes are just amazing!  The weather has been cool ... with a short stretch of very hot temps, and now back to cool temps again.  There were actually frost warnings last night, and now through Sunday night.  But it was so great to be able to work in the gardens this afternoon and not get hot!  I got tons done.

As I said, the flowering trees have been gorgeous this year!  I take this same photo every year ... LOL!  That's an old pear tree, next to my gazebo ... I took the rotting roof off the gazebo and there is a wisteria growing up the side of it.  I hope some day, the wisteria will cover the gazebo!  I didn't get many/any pears last year, nor do I remember the tree blooming this much ... we'll see what happens this year.

Here's a crabapple blooming along the driveway out front ... it's crooked because someone backed into it (?)!

 

This is the front of the house ... you can see the weeping Cercis (Weeping Redbud) in the front right ... the deer trimmed it a lot over the winter ... but it still looks great!  And another crabapple tot he left.

 





 

This is my variegated Tulip tree, behind the house ... it's just a gorgeous tree!

 



 

And across the pond ... more flowering crabapples ...

 



 

I love the "green" of this time of year ... when the heat hits this gorgeous emerald green quickly turns yellow and dull.

 

One of my favorite bushes, the bridal wreath spirea ... I have two of them, both given to me by friends.  This one in the front of the house came from one of my sisters friends ... it had gotten too big for their space ... it can get as large as it wants at my house!  Isn't it just stunning?

 

One of my Jack in the Pulpit ... I keep thinking I need more of these!  Very cool plants, perfect in my hosta garden.

 

And alliums ... they seem to be taking over my back gardens ... (note to self; dig up many of these bulbs this fall and share with friends!)

Another loved plant that I've been putting in my gardens annually for years, and this is the first time it came back!  The candelabra primrose ... I was SO happy that it came back this year, finally!

The clematis on the barn just burst into color.... unfortunately, the purple flower blends right in with the purple barn.  This spring I added a pink double clematis to the base of this purple one, and hope that the pink one interweaves the purple one ... we'll see how that works out.

 

I've found scapes on 2 daylilies so far ... that's REALLY early!  Obviously left over from last year ... my seeds from last year are growing though I don't have very good germination this year.  I might have to re-think growing them outside instead of starting them in the basement. 

 

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day weekend, and please do take time to think of all those men and women that serve or have served in our armed forces ...



 

Spring has Sprung!

We're definitely in Spring weather right now ... 50's at night and 70's during the day ... we kind of skipped over the 60's ... maybe they'll come back for a while so we won't then go straight to the 80's!

The Hosta folks were here today at the hoop house, the WNY Hosta Society and the Buffalo Area Daylily Society (BADS) which I'm involved in, have their hoop house here where they store their potted plants.  The Hosta folk had their Spring sale this morning and I got 3 of the guys to put my pump out today.

I use the water from the pond to water my gardens, and they also use the water for their potted plants ... there are underground pipes running to the front of the house and the front gardens.  The pond was one of the reasons I bought this property, since I knew I would need the pond to water the gardens.

Two weeks ago, Regina (my garden helper) and I planted the bareroot trees I had purchased at Turnbull Garden Center in North Collins, NY ... they have a great selection of tress for reasonable prices ... the prices go way up once the trees are potted or burlapped.

The day we went to get the trees, it was a very breezy 40 degree days ... chilled us to the bone.  We decided to wait until the next day to actually plants as the weather was supposed to get better.  Here are the trees waiting to get planted:

The next day was much better, so we got to work!  This first one is an Autumn Blaze Maple that we planted on the outside of the donkeys pasture ... donkeys and horses will eat trees if they can, so this is the second one I've planted just out of their reach.  I did plant a willow in their pasture, and surrounded it with fencing so it would grow.

Regina has her sock-monkey hat on!  Here's another view of the maple and you can see the hoop house in the background ...

The next tree is a self-pollinating Chinese chestnut ... we took out a Katsura that didn't survive the early warmth and then bad frosts last spring.  Too bad, it was a really pretty tree .. but I don't have the patience for tender trees!

Next, we put in a Sunburst Honey Locust by the road, near the parking area by the daylily sale beds.  There used to be a row of pine trees that would give some shade, but they were in bad shape so I had them taken down last fall.  I plant Locusts by the daylily beds since their leaves are small and disintegrate easily. 

I've been adding more trees to the front pasture where the daylily sale beds are, as it gets way too hot in the summer ... some relief from the sun is welcome! 

The last tree is a Black Alder ... they were selling it for people who had wet areas and wanted something other than a willow ... the spot we planted it in, is wet when it's wet ... the hole filled up with water as we were digging ....

I also planted 2 bushes ... a Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea and another witch hazel.

Here's a picture I like, the clouds opened for a second to let the light through ....

And another creature picture ... the dogs and I were walking around the pond one evening last week, when I heard a splash and looked to see what it was.  I didn't actually see anything so I continued walking and saw Rocky sniffing the tail of this ...

I yelled at him to get away and took them both back to the house and got my camera.  Snapping turtles are just so prehistoric looking!  It obviously had recently crawled out of it's winter mud home ... look at these claws!

 

I love how the willows show the first signs of life in the spring. This corkscrew willow was started from a twig by my Mom.  One of the arrangements at my Dad's memorial service had corkscrew willow branches in it, so Mom stuck one of them in water and it became this tree.  I've since done the same and there are 4 more on these around my farm.

Here are some daffodils that are in different gardens:

I have some huge clumps in the daylily gardens out front that I need to lift and separate ... adding that to the never-ending list!

Here is my Cleveland Pear blooming in the back pasture ... I love these trees, great shape to them!

 Here's my weeping Redbud in the front of the house ... the deer really trimmed the branches this past winter.  That's never happened before so I didn't protect it .... looks like I'll need to next winter.  the blooms are just so neat!

I've opened the barn for the summer, put the furniture on the deck, uncovered my awning for the season and am going to cook a hamburger on the grill for dinner!  So the weather has definitely changed and I'm looking forward to daylily bloom season ... can't wait to see what seedlings are waiting for me to discover this year.

Slowly but surely ....

It is slowly turning green here ... the key word is "slowly" ... but that's not stopping the plants from emerging in the gardens.

Crazy amounts of rain last week and a little bit of ice ... not sure how well you can see the ice in the trees in this picture?  And the pond turned brown from all the rain.

That didn't stop my first pair of visitors, a Donald and a Daisy?  Not really the first pair of visitors, but the first I caught on my camera.  Last weekend I saw a pair of Kingfishers and a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers ... both sets of birds were beautiful!

Today the sun came out, it was still windy and chilly, but it was very nice to see the sun.  It's amazing how quickly everything gets green after the first really good Spring rain ...

Some of the plants that are coming up quickly are fall blooming crocus:

Allium - they are everywhere!!!

A clump of daylilies!

Blooming hellebores:

My hypertufa house and trough are growing too!

Rocky just sits and watches me, he thinks I'm a bit crazy taking all the pictures that I do.

Can't leave out Lily, this is what they did after we were outside ... love how they sleep together!

And Bailey sleeps by my muddy boots.  He used to sleep in one of the kitchen chairs until I got new ones.  These new ones are obviously a little smaller, so he doesn't like them. 

And my last quilt square of the season ...

It's time to put the quilt away until next fall/winter ... since it's about time to get outside.  Next weekend I am picking up the bare-root trees I bought at Turnbull Garden Nursery in North Collins, NY ... my garden helper Regina and I will then be planting them .. let's hope it's a little warmer!  That always seems to start the season ....planting trees ....

Happy Spring?? Is it coming?

Last year at this time the temperatures were in the 70's and 80's ... which was way too hot for this time of year.  We then had many frosts in April that really caused problems for plants, bushes and trees that had started to emerge with the warm weather in March.

This year is totally different ... we've had snow thru the middle of last week, some more predicted for next week.  But today was glorious!  The sun was warm and melted the majority of the snow .... here's a picture from this week ...

The pond was just starting to open up.  That's a sure sign that the weather is getting better!  Here's another day with the ice on the pond melting:

And sunshine!!  That always makes me feel better ... in this picture you can see my new Heron garden sculpture that I bought last weekend at Plantasia ... and the pond behind the Heron is wide open!  I don't plan on trying to scare off the heron that visit my pond, I just thought this was a neat heron, and very reasonably priced!

This morning the dogs and I wandered over to my neighbors, he wanted to borrow my chainsaw since his had quit.  He's making maple syrup and needed to cut wood to feed his fire.  Two other neighbors are also making maple syrup, but Bob has the best setup ... not surprising for an engineer!

Here are some of the trees he's tapped:

And here's Bob adding wood to his fire ... he made this contraption out of a barrel.

He expects to have 5 gallons of maple syrup by the time he's done ... it takes 30 to 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, that's a lot of work!!  He's been at it every weekend for the past month, or so.  Here's the fire burning:

You can see the sap/syrup boiling away on top ... here's a better picture:

He gave me a taste .. at this point is was just sweet water.  But I might get some real syrup from him!!  I was talking to his wife, Sally, about the cost of maple syrup ... and she had recently seen a gallon for $45 and thought that was cheap.  Now I know why, it takes a long time of boiling sap to get it to reduce to make maple syrup!

As I was walking back home, I looked at the Cleveland Pear tree in my back pasture, and the buds were just amazing ... as was the sky.

I went to my favorite tree nursery a couple of weeks ago, Turnbull's Garden Center, and picked out a couple more bare root trees.  They have a huge warehouse where they bring in bare root trees in March to sell, then they hold them for us until we're able to plant in April.  I got the Cleveland Pear from them, and many others.  Bare root trees are so much easier to plant without that huge burlapped root ball.  And they are a third of the price.

I've been working along on my quilt ... these colors are not my normal colors.  I've been trying to get out of my comfort zone and add all colors to this quilt.

So more "flower" squares: Oranges & yellows

Reds:

I'm currently working on a totally different color combination!!

I want to wish everyone a Happy Easter, Passover, or whatever Spring celebration you are planning!