springs busting out all over...

some iris blooming outside, a new one with white and beige.  the corner bed with the woodland phlox blooming away and the new Confetti Ligularia trying to steal the show, some nice light green fern adds a nice highlight.  the third photo shows the daylily bed with some thing crowding around. I like all the mix of leaf color. rose champion, sedum, and the yellowish 'Lightning Flash' coreopsis.

above photo is looking back west from the north side of house. lot's of varied leaf texture and color with the heuchera mixed in with the daylilies and on the right penstemon.
Below is a new heuchera 'Marble' something. next I'm glad to see the Japanese mint came back from last summer, and two hostas, Striptease really growing strong in a planter out back! and then June hosta on the north side of house. I have a ring of copper at the base of this to keep off the snails/slugs. worked pretty well last year, we'll see if it does this summer. :)

blood moon and late freeze, phooey!

before we had our last freeze warning Monday night, I went out and took some photos of things in case everything got ruined of sorts.  Good news is that the garden is doing just fine now, the cold came and passes with dipping just below freezing. I of course used every sheet and blanket and overturned bucket or flowerpot possible to cover stuff out in the yard.  Above are some pictures of Snowdrops which I got extra with some bulb orders.  And the second photo is 'Blue Shadow' fothergilla.  This is its 2nd springs in my yard; last spring I had no blooms because the summer before had extreme drought which threw it into dormancy and then the late summer rains made it try and bloom etc etc. so no blooms last spring. anyway, how pretty they are this year! only a few but it's such a little starter shrub. I look forward to it getting established and getting some great fall color and more blooms in spring. The photo below shows the north bed, some red tulips and a purple that survived last summer and came back this spring. I hadn't planted any new tulip this year.  I BOUGHT some new tulips last fall but the paper sack full of them is lost still somewhere in the back room of the house.....oops. you can see some white daffodils in the background, purple loropetalum on the side of the house. and to the right a really nice clump of clusiana tulips which come back better and better each year.

below is a photo of my smoke tree, it's buds were frozen out last year and this year it grew out so nicely, early, but i covered it up really well Monday night and I think all the blooms will make their smoky opening flowers this year. You can see peonies also in the photo. I hope the lack of rain won't keep them from fully blooming out..  and the last photo, the moon eclipse. Yes i got up around 2:30 and went outside just to see.  i was actually a little early and went back inside and laid down on the floor by an open window that I could open my eyes and stare up out of with the moon in view.  eventually I got to see the eclipse happen and by the time I got outside it already began to pass over.

april looking forward to more rain...

<
Welcome to the garden this year, a new intersectional peony.  I've been shopping around for a while for a yellow one, mainly finding Bartzella everywhere online. but when I found this one at the nursery, I went ahead and went for it. Yumi Itoh Peony x 'yellow doodle dandee' is what I think this one is called.  I put it in the northeast corner of the house so to protect from afternoon sun. guess we'll see it makes it in OKC or not! :P

I hope this Ligularia 'garden confetti' grows in as nice and big as the plain green one I got last year. I'm excited to see the leaves if they get as nice and big as the other one. last photo is tulip clusiana all closed up since it was all cloudy today and maybe going to rain.. come on rain spring, rain!