My Garden

Pink Peony (from generic mix)	Same peony, looks less pink now
	Painted Daisy

The rabbits always eat my painted daisies, and this is the first time I've had even one bloom.

Savlia 'East Friesland'	Salvia 'May Night'
Peony	Dianthus (Pinks)
My first Daylily bloom.	Bell Flower (Campanula 'Birch Hybrid')

I have some white columbine flowers in there with the blue ones. I guess these came from seeds.	My fascination with buds continues.
Iris 'Ceasar's Brother'	The first daisy.
I have some weed daisy, and some Shasta Daisy. I'm not sure which this is, because the Shasta's have gotten old and are dying down, and it is harder to tell. The Shasta daisy's are nicer and shorter.	The front garden is still mostly green, but at least it has some interesting texture and variations of green now.

Allium	Looks like they survived my blanket of leaves.
This Geranium is getting very large.	This is another plant I think looks great before it blooms.
Iris sibirica 'Caesars Brother'	Pink Spanish Bluebells

I have some evildoers in my garden. They might look cute and furry to some, but to me they are the enemy because they are creating havok in my garden.

The squirrels are the least offensive, but they do annoy when they dig up things that I have just planted. They also love to bury seeds in various places, and I have random tree seedlings that need to be pulled up everywhere.

The chipmunks like to create tunnels in my yard and flower beds. They also annoy when they are chirping very loudly outside my window at 6 in the morning when I am trying to sleep in. They used to actually squeeze underneath the siding of my house outside my kitchen. That freaked me out as I imagined them wandering around in my walls. Since I was traumatized by actual racoons living in my walls when I was a child, I found some expanding foam and tried to close up any place they might squeeze in. It has created an unsightly look on the side of the house, that I still can't clean up properly, but at least I am not sharing my home with these noisy creatures.

By far the most evil creature is the rabbit. Yes, they are just animals trying to find something to eat, but must they eat my most favorite plants! I know that they like grass and weeds. We could peacefully co-exist in my yard, if they would stick to that diet. I saw 2 baby rabbits eating the grass in my yard several times, and I let them be, hoping I wouldn't regret it later.

I did regret it. After a week of not being out in my garden because of rain, I checked things out and discovered this (click on it to see larger image):


Some plants were chewed down to the ground, and may not recover. Earlier this week, I actually caught one of the baby rabbits in the act of eating a plant. I was so angry when I saw that, I ran outside screaming and chased it away. The rest of the week was spent looking out my windows spying, and then trying to chase the rabbits away. The problem is that I chase them out of the front yard and they go into the back yard, and then vice versa. I end up literally running in circles to keep them out.

I know chasing is not really going to work, because I cannot run around my house all day and night long. They do most of the damage in the evening. So, I found something called "Liquid Fence". It is truly foul smelling when you apply it (kind of like fish sauce multiplied by 10), but the smell fades in a day. Supposedly the rabbits can still smell it later. It does need to be reapplied, but is supposed to hold up in the rain. We will see. I did my dance with the rabbits again after I had applied it, but so far I haven't caught them in the flowers, just in the grass. As I've said, I'm willing to compromise, and let them eat my grass, if they will leave the good plants alone!

There were several of these germaniums when I moved into my house. I like them because the color is different than many other purples, and they bloom for a long time. The biggest problem I have with them, is that they were planted close to the house, and I have made that bed bigger. They need to be moved to the front, and they are hard to dig up. I have been slowly dividing them and moving them to other places.


One cool thing about taking these photos, is that I have started to notice a lot of neat details in the flowers that I never noticed before like the hairy buds.





This columbine is 2 years old and is very tall. I have a bad habit of planting tall things at the edges, and this should be more in the middle of my bed, because it is taller than anything else. The problem is that if it was in the middle, it wouldn't get as much sun and then maybe it wouldn't grow as tall.


This primrose looks silly in my yard. I used to have 3, but only 1 is left. I made the bed larger, so this small flower gets hidden behind much larger plants. It also doesn't match any colors. But it is hard for me to just get rid of plants, so I let it stay.

Wood Hyacinth, Spanish Bluebell. A few days ago the pink and white flowers started to bloom.


For some reason, the blue ones bloom a little later, and they are taller. I ordered these as a mixture of bulbs from White Flower Farm because they are supposed to be good underneath trees (and they are). I really need to divide these up and spread them around a little now.

Today, the blue ones have bloomed.

I planted one of these in my front garden about 5 years ago, and it has really started to spread. I would like some on the other side of this front garden, so I should try to move some of them after they bloom.

Snowdrop Anemone (Anemone sylvestris)


Emerging Snowdrop Anemone

I like this type of Hosta best when it is just emerging, like this.




I have no clue what this is. I don't remember planting it, and I can't imagine why I would just have one of these. It looked like the dwarf iris when it was emerging, but now it is white and purple. Perhaps there was some inter-species mating? It is pretty, and I wouldn't mind having more of these.


Another Dwarf Iris

Sedum. I think Sedum is fine when it blooms in the fall, but I especially like the leaves before it gets to bloom.

We've entered the Green Period where I have lots of daffodil leaves and not much else. At least it is better than brown and grey. The dwarf iris should last another week I hope. Some late blooming pink tulips would be nice if I can remember to plant some this fall.









The area covered by leaves a few weeks ago, seems to be recovering nicely now.




What's not green enough is my grass. It took a hard hit during the drought last year, and I it is not all coming back. I am not sure what to do about it, because I probably should have seeded by now. My seeding efforts in the past weren't too successful either.