Our pullets!

The beginning of March I picked up 6 new chicks for expanding our chicken flock. I bought 2 Cream Legbars, 2 Red Stars and 2 Black Stars. Below is what they now look like at 4 weeks of age.

 Cream Legbar, note the crest.

 Red Star

 Black Star, note the legs are blackish.

Cream Legbar, these are supposed to lay blue green eggs.

Park's primroses this weekend!

Folks,

Camellia Forest Nursery in Chapel Hill, NC is having open house this weekend. I read about it last night on one of their Facebook posts. They mentioned a sale on Clifford Parks heat tolerant primroses. I've purchased these in the past and they do survive our hot dry summers. Camellia Forest will be open Sunday afternoon if you would want to get some of these beautiful plants.

So I somehow ended up there to get some primroses and 2 camellias. I feel lucky to have these locally grown primroses available in our area. These are all crosses, each different than the other. I have one primrose in our garden that is about 15 years old, so they can live a long time. 

 The camera did not capture the dark burgundy color on this primrose. Wow!

Oh and I loaded the camera with images of a lot of the camellias in bloom at the nursery. Maybe a post on them soon.

Hellebores blooming in the garden, big post!

Folks,
We might get our third ice storm of March, usually we have a nice March. Some of the hellebores got crunched by fallen maple branches, but no plants were destroyed. We did loose two hellebore plants over the winter, Corsican Hellebore(ouch) and a small very dark red plant in the front garden.

We did not buy any new hellebores this year, I dug up and potted 36 baby hellebores for Meg's class and their "Garden Center". We are adding two new Daphnes and a Witch Hazel to the garden, photos below.

The Hellebores featured below, over 30 different ones from our garden and I did not photograph all of them..

 Slightly picotee white double hellebore.

 Picotee double hellebore.

 Swirling Skirts double hellebore!

 The ice likely beat this double up.

Semi double hellebore pinkish white.

 

Double yellow hellebore, picked this up last year.  Funny last year when I brought this home it had a slightly pink picotee to it. I like it boldly yellow just the same.

Gold Finch, this took like 4 years to bloom in the garden, babies all under it from last years blooms.

 Hard to see, the cold weather affected this one. The white with raspberry edges is hard to see.

 One of my biggest blooming plants I started from a seedling.

 

 Penny's Pink not quite open yet!

 Pink Frost

 Winter's Song

Honeyhill Joy

 Helleborus Viridus which was collected in the wild in Northern Italy.

Helleborus Liguricus

Now for some other blooming plants in the garden.

 Daphne

 Baby Moon daffodil my favorite daffodil, it is a miniature.

 Daphne alba new to our garden, need to find a big pot to plant it in.

 Witch hazel "Arnold's promise new to the garden needs to be planted.

 Camellai 'Crimson Candles' hit badly by the cold temps this winter. I hope it lives.

Crocuses.