Flower Updates

I'm behind on posting about the flowers...

After such a delayed spring, the bulbs finally, slowly popped out one by one...

The cute tulip border with daffodils and hyacinth:

Note the heavy clusters in the middle. When I re-planted the bulbs in the fall, I had spaced out some of the types of flowers. If you recall, I ran out of time before I got them all planted, so came back later with the shallower planted bulbs and filled them in the "blank" space I had left.

It now appears highly likely that the "blank" space was not in fact blank and so now bunches of bulbs are clustered on top of each other. Deeeelightful.

White daffodils I have no recollection of planting!

Colors!

Now these are my new favorite!
Unlike 2016, I did actually get my fall pansies in last year and one of the options was these "black velvet" ones which are a really, really dark purple. They are gorgeous!! Cannot wait for them to fill out!

Within a few weeks the new tulips I had planted in the fall were coming up. They're quite tall!

Such pretty coloring!

Unfortunately they're the only tulips that came up!
Why can't I get tulips to grow year to year?!  (And don't say squirrels - everyone goes to squirrels. The beds are undisturbed, ya'll. Unless the squirrel mafia hired the mole as an underground bulb hitman...it's not the squirrels!)

And then soon after, my newest addition started blooming.
I saw Ranunculus in a catalog this winter and just couldn't pass them up. I've never seen them before, but wow. Just, wow!

They're what I panted on top of the tulips instead of in the blank spot. 😑



Cute little blooms on what I think is a geum marmalade, but I'll have to confirm that on the tag when I locate it. And the fuchsia not-an-anemone (freesia) came back again!

















As per usual, the front beds are a mess! All a tangle of yet-to-be-trimmed liriope, spanish bells, rogue peony, lilies and gladiolas coming up, pansies filling out and newest of all: apparently the yellow balloon flowers I purchased last year re-seeded! EVERYWHERE!!

Craziness!

And then there are the two dying camelias I tried because of the inability to grow anything else in the corners of the stoop.
I say "dying" and not "dead" because, to the contrary of all visual cues, at the suggestion of a nursery owner I gentle scraped away some bark and did find some green!

When I was describing the condition, he came to suspect lack of water being the culprit. They are not only under the 2nd story overhang (several feet), but are also under the roof overhang which is several more feet!
So when it rains, I figure I'm good! And apparently probably not so much :-/

So I went home, fertilized them, gave them some good soakings and we watch.

In the meantime, I put a large pot back there to fill in the space and since my hopes are at about 12% chance of the camelias surviving.


I put several partial shade plants in the pot, so we'll see how it goes.

The crowning jewel?

A honeysuckle!!

Who doesn't need a ginormous vine climbing at their front door?!

I'm going off the plan to keep it trimmed, cut it down to the base each year and hope that the pot helps keep it manageable and that it will survive winters in there :-/  Fingers crossed!

I did quite the number on it trying to stuff it through the trellis, but by the morning a couple days later, it was already wrapping itself happily around it again!

Moving to the back, we had a lovely spread of blooming tulips in the wildflower border:

And the clematis are doing marvelously!!

Halfway up a week ago:                                           Nearly touching the top support as of this week!

 Both have put out buds, but the earlier Jackmanii (on the left) seems to have peaked out. It is a smaller plant, but I was hoping it would get a little higher this year. Oh well. Patience.
The Earnest Markham shows no signs of slowing down! Yes!! Cover the arbor! Go! Go! Go!!!

The knock-out roses are starting to bloom, the peonies will pop soon and then there's the huge delphinium that shot up and should blossom soon.

Here is a shot of it on the left compared to the arbor. It's huge!

The good news in the rest of the wildflower border is that the Sweet William re-seeded itself.

The bad news in the wildflower border is that the Sweet William re-seeded itself. Extensively.















Such an anticipatory time of year - watching everything come back to life! Wondering how well they'll do or how big something will be or in the case of wildflowers - where the heck they're even going to come up at!