photos – Page 3

I think I love just about everything about Spring … well ok, maybe not the garbage that seems to blow on my lawn and gets tangled in my roses or the sometimes endless days of rain … but otherwise, Spring just might be my favorite season.

I love watching the grass turn from dry straw like patches to tender green; seeing the first stem and leaves come up out of the soil from a seed I planted only weeks before; and seeing the first few flowers of spring bloom in my garden.

Speaking of Spring flowers … my Danfordia irises – tiny little things, came up in the second week of April, but unfortunately they only lasted about a week. I wish these lovely delicate flowers would last a month instead of just days!

They’re so pretty!

It’s cool outside today, but yesterday … oh it was one of the best and worst days of Spring! Temps were almost 90 F with the humidity, but then at about 5:30 pm it got really dark and winds suddenly came up out of nowhere. I was outside pruning some roses and our neighbor behind us started to lose part of his eves trough, and the one next to us lost part of his lattice fence …

All the while I was gathering up my gardening tools and trying to get inside the house while things were flying around ie fence, eves trough and small branches from our other neighbors huge maple! My husband was just coming back from a store when he got caught in the wind storm. A tree fell right in front of the car as he was driving! Power lines came down with it too! Surprisingly this didn’t really make the news … but as far as I’m concerned we were both out in a bad wind storm or mini-tornado! That’s what it seemed like anyway! After that the rain started and we had a small thunderstorm – what an end to a beautiful day!

At least my flowers didn’t seem to get damaged in the storm. The hyacinth had just opened up the other day and I took photos of them before the storm … oh that sweet smelling hyacinth perfume … wafting through the garden. I love it!

I also have some tulips that are just starting to bloom today, daffodils that will bloom in a couple of days and several other plants leafing out or developing buds. The garden is going to be lovely this year!

How is your garden this spring? Are your plants coming up earlier than normal – as they are here in Toronto?

BTW sorry for the lack of Green Thumb Sunday posts in the last two weeks. I’ve been sick lately (bad reaction to a new med), and also discouraged by the lack of participation from members. If you are making GTS posts please remember to check in on this site so we will all know that you’ve made a new Green Thumb post.

Amaryllis from bud to bloom

by Tricia

Join

At the beginning of January we brought our three Amaryllis plants up from the basement where they’d had a two and a half month dormant period.

Other than the few pale leaves that they had growing at the time I didn’t expect more than leaf growth until the end of February or the beginning of March. After that I expected March blooms.

Two plants seem to be sticking to the plan, but one decided to send up a flower shoot only a week after I’d brought it upstairs into my sunny kitchen.

By January 23rd their was a flower bud on the Amaryllis’ stock and it was just beginning to open:

The next day the flower bud split in two and looked like a lobster claw for a few hours. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of it when it was like that. I was instead surprised to see how fast it went from partially open bud to this:

Three days after the bud had first started to open I discovered that the first flower was beginning to bloom (Jan. 26th):

Only hours after the first flower started to open the second one opened as well:

By January 27th, only four days after the bud began to open, all four flowers were fully open and HUGE!

Each flower was probably almost the size of a small bread plate! I didn’t get a photo of all four flowers in bloom this year though … Chris ended up being admitted to the hospital on the 31st and all photo taking stopped for a while. By the time things were ok health wise the flowers were pretty much done blooming. Oh well.

By the way this Amaryllis is the one I inherited from my parents. It’s a vibrant red/orange. My other two have white petals tinged with coral, peach and pink – like this.

Do you have any flowers blooming in your home right now? I just wrote a post on my main blog Tricia’s Musings about how we’ve pretty much been treated to flowers indoors and outdoors all year round over the past year.

The last of the Monkshood blooms

by Tricia

Join

My Monkshood, well the Azure Monkshood I mean, was a little late in blooming this year. It usually blooms in early September and finishes up by early to mid-October. However, this year it didn’t seem to bloom until late September and the blooms, though slightly wilted lasted until sometime last week. Maybe that happened because we had a drier and cooler September than we normally do and I wasn’t out watering.

Here’s a photo of Azure Monkshood:

The next photo is also Azure Monkshood, but for some reason it’s lighter in color than it’s ever been. It’s coloration is more like my Bi-color Monkshood that blooms in June.

I planted a rose in front of the last one so it competes all summer with the rose for water and sunlight. Perhaps that’s another reason why it’s lighter this year.

Perhaps I should look up Monkshood and see how easy or hard it is to transplant and then if possible move it next spring to a more open area of the garden.

Sorry this post is late – again. I usually make my GTS posts at around Midnight, but I’ve been feeling quite ill the last two weeks. My Crohn’s is acting up quite badly and sometimes I just don’t feel up to sitting in front of the computer trying to come up with a post.

I just love gardening in the Spring

Amaryllis from bud to bloom

The last of the Monkshood blooms

Meta

Connect with me