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Just about every day something new is blooming in my garden

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Wow I’m BAD. I run the Green Thumb Sunday meme and I haven’t done one since last November. Yep, bad bad bad meme creator!

Ok it’s time to get back on track. This meme is still alive … barely, but I know some of our members are still posting Green Thumb Sunday posts regularly, at least more regularly than I have been lately.

I don’t have a good excuse for my absence. As usual I haven’t been feeling well thanks to my Crohn’s, but yes, I’ve still been gardening and so far this year I’m amazed with my garden. I just need to start posting about what I’m seeing and doing more often, now don’t I?

So … if you’ve been participating in Green Thumb Sunday or waiting around to see if it was going to start up again … come on, let’s see some Green Thumb Posts. (please).

As I said above I’ve been amazed with my garden this year. I think it started waking up in February … way way early! By March 15th I had my first Crocuses blooming. Usually they don’t bloom until near the end of March.

First crocus to bloom in my garden this year

This was the first crocus to bloom in my backyard this year. It bloomed on March 15th! Shortly thereafter more and more crocus popped up. They’re all done now though.

Years ago when I first started gardening I planted Snow Drops .. but I rarely ever saw them. Either they bloomed too early for me to notice or it warmed up to fast and they faded within days … unnoticed. It was obvious this year that they’ve been growing, multiplying and thriving as I had a few large clumps come up in March.

Finally caught some Snow Drops blooming

I even had a few tiny Dwarf Danfordia Irises come up too

Dwarf Irises near the end of their bloom

They’re a little faded in this photo as they were already wilting by the time I noticed them. They didn’t last long. We’ve had some warm weather in March and April which wasn’t all that good for making Spring flowers last.

Here’s a shot of my center garden bed … full of red and white Tulips, Heuchera, Astilbe, perennial Geranium, and tiny shoots of Phlox and Hostas and probably a few other plants that I’m forgetting … I took this picture on April 18th. I just wish that I’d pushed the hoop that I use to contain the Phlox when it grows down a bit before I took the photo!

Tulips, Heuchera and lots of other plants in the garden bed

This is a wide shot of my garden. It’s small, but for the middle of April there’s a heck of a lot of plants up. All of my roses have fully leafed out now and more and more plants are coming up each day. Right now I’ve got Daffodils and Hyacinths that are just about finished blooming and I think my Glories of the Snow are pretty much gone. I have a feeling that I’ll have roses about two weeks earlier than usual this year too.

Wide shot of my small garden - everythings coming up

And Finally this is my dog, Midnight, enjoying some sun in the garden. She’s growing and blooming too. She’s two and a half years old now and still very puppy like in a lot of ways … just thankfully not quite as hyper as she was a year or so ago! LOL

My Labrador Retriever enjoying some sun in the garden

How is your garden doing? What’s blooming? What’s growing?






My replacement roses are doing great this year

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Welcome to all the new Green Thumb Sunday members that I finally got around to adding yesterday! I hope you enjoy our little group.

Earlier this week I went out into the garden with my camera and I took a number of great photos of the plants that were blooming and new ones that were growing, but I’ve had such a busy week I didn’t get around to transferring them from my camera to my computer yet. That’s the trouble with photos, especially if you take a lot of them at once – it takes time to prepare them for posting.

Anyway … I do have some photos to share that I took two weeks ago. Just imagine the plants being bigger or having more leaves now. 😉

This is the Climbing Iceberg Rose that I bought last summer to replace Antique ’89. Antique ’89 must have had too much winter damage in 2007 and died in late spring. Well as you can see Climbing iceberg is doing great:

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This rose is over 4 feet high already and I’m sure it will only get bigger in the next month. I have a standard iceberg rose shrub at the front of the house and once it gets going it’s covered in blooms all season so I expect that the climbing version will do the same.

I had replaced a few roses last year and all of the replacements seem to be doing well. The majority of the established roses (2 to 5 years in the ground) all have long green stems and seem to be ahead of themselves in growth compared to other years.

The Astilbe is also growing well. I have several clumps of it in shady areas of my garden. I think I’m currently growing three different types.

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Basically everything in my garden seems to be doing well this year with the exception of one rose – Dr. J H Nicholas – it’s struggling. Hopefully it makes it, but if it doesn’t I guess I’ll just replace it with a hardier rose.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Working in the garden – Spring cleaning

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Well I managed to finally get out into the Garden on Sunday. It was a lovely day and it was high time that I got out there to tidy up my garden and begin pruning the roses.

Last Autumn I didn’t even manage to put my garden to bed. By this I mean I didn’t do the usual winter protection. I was just too ill. So I’d have to say that I really haven’t done much in my garden at all since perhaps last September and at that time it was mainly only watering the garden.

That’s 7 months of not doing any garden work. Do you know how my body is feeling right now?

I was outside for about five hours. Once I got started I couldn’t make myself stop. Surprisingly I felt pretty good while I was working away. However once I got back inside I began to notice that my back was stiffening up. Now the bottom of my left foot is numb. I guess I must have a pinched nerve in my back! Oh the damage I do to myself when I garden. I tell you – it’s an extreme sport for me.

There are so many plants growing it’s unbelievable! Some are way ahead of themselves. For instance, my daffodils rarely make an appearance before mid-May, yet I have two that are up and blooming and more to come. Some of my supposedly later blooming Tulips are also up and about to bloom. What else was growing well? Strawberry plants, raspberry canes, several clematis, helebores, columbine, monkshood, toad lilies, regular lilies, oriental lilies, several types of tulip, hyacinth, muscari, lavender, Chionodoxa, snow drops, sedum, astilbe, geranium, new york asters, phlox, hostas, trilliums, peonies, rudbeckia, honeysuckle vines and on and on. I’m sure I’ve missed some of the perennials that I saw out there.

I believe that most of the roses will end up surviving. There’s a lot of dead branches but there’s life in the lower areas. Some are quite hardy and are already leaving out at the tips and upper branches. I didn’t survey each rose because I was trying to systematically work my way through the garden one area at a time.

I think I managed to tidy up half of the back garden beds. If my body cooperates I’ll go back outside later today and try to finish up the back. Then I’ll have to do the side of the house, the front garden and boulevard. Oh my … it’s a lot of work!

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