Some May Blooms For You

The Last of the house repairs have been completed and all is starting to return to normal around our home. We still need to repaint the shutters; doors and trim work and also pressure wash the bricks to remove some of the tar left from flying shingles. I don’t really consider that repairs, it’s more like maintenance. Everything needed a new coat of paint anyway; I had just commented to someone that the shutters were starting to look a little faded. What a relief to be done with all that.

We’ve been steadily sticking things here and there in the garden and the beds are starting to fill up some. Either this Sunday afternoon or next weekend we are going to start getting the mulch replaced in the beds. I know we are running a little behind with that, but we had planted a bunch of seeds and I wanted to give them a chance to come up before we spread it all out. After a tremendous amount of floundering around, we decided to go with small pine bark. I like it because it’s a dark color, it’s cheap and hopefully it will improve the soil as it breaks down. Everything is going to look so much better once all that is done.

Friday night we are headed a hundred miles south of here to spend the weekend with our dear friend Carol. She’s a total garden junky just like the two of us and it should be a lot of fun. We will no doubt hit all the local nurseries. Yay! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and I hope you enjoy the flower pictures below.

This is one of the new spirea we got the past weekend at Petals From the Past. Isn’t it beautiful?

'Anthony Waterer'

Jamie’s ‘Nikko Blue’ hydrangea is doing very well in its new spot. I think we did good when we decided to put it there.

'Nikko Blue'

Here is the other spirea we got this past weekend.

'Little Princess'

We also added another lantana to the mix. I noticed this week that none of the others are blooming right now and I don’t know why, they just stopped.

'Denholm'

Plumbago 'Hardy Blue'

'Red Velvet'

'Double Decker'

We decided to build our collection of roses back up. I recently tossed a bunch of hybrids two years ago because of black spot. Seeing Phillip’s posts on his roses have inspired us to give it another try, but this time we are using old fashion and antique roses. I hope we do well with them…

'Dortmund'

'Red Rum'

'Red Hot Poker'

'Sound of Silence'

I’m guessing this is some variety of crinum that Carol gave us. Her home is a wonderful old farm house that is fast approaching or has recently passed 100 years old and I suspect these have been there about the same length of time.

'Warm Igloo'

'Aztec Gold'

'Regency Dandy'