2016 is looking good so far in our garden!

We took a 2 week travel trip over Christmas and New Years, when we returned the garden surprised us with so much blooming. It had been very warm for December and the area also had record rain falls.

I managed to get these photos of most of what was blooming. more hellebores will be opening soon. It is going down to 19 degrees tomorrow night, the open camellia blooms will brown out for sure.

One more thing we are starting our 8th year at this garden blog, time flies doesn't it. Sorry we don't get much time on this blog, spend too much time on Facebook.

Daphne is in full bloom in a pot, I was not able to take in the aroma today, it was in the mid 50s. We lost 2 other daphnes in the last winter, so we are down to one.

 I think this camellia is Greensboro Red, the flower is huge, 4-5 inches around! This shrub is around 5 foot tall and just starting to get more than a few blooms on it.

 This pink camellia is Debutante, a very old camellia. I find this camellia in gardens all over, even in Louisiana last week.

 Here is an locally crossed variety of camellia from Chapel Hill. It is called Crimson Candles and is featured in the photo above and below..

 This candy striped camellia is called La Peppermint. It is a slow grower and we find the flowers to open when its very cold and some years the frosts gets all the blooms before it opens.

This hellebore is one of my babies, I have two of these blooming in the garden right now. Babies I mean crosses that seeded in our garden by the help of bees.

 This hellebore is doing very well as you can see. We almost lost this plant a few years ago, it has recovered. It is a H. niger cross that is sterile, no babies from this one.

 Here is a sweet double hellebore that is doing great in the garden.

Below is a H. niger cross called Merlin. Sorry for the bad photo. It did poorly last year, doing great this year.

Below is some tommy crocuses that were a total surprise in the garden.

 This crocus was in another portion of the garden, not sure if it is a tommy or another species.

Daffodils opened today finally

Finally some of the daffodils that came with our property opened today.! The new ones I planted last fall are getting close. Below is one of the smaller daffodils that almost opened today.

On Sunday Meg and I walked into our woods and found 3 Trout Lilies in bloom. This is our first native wildflower this year!

My work at Julia's has been very pleasant this week. While I've been finishing up the porch I constantly get the aroma of this Daphne at the front door.

Can you smell that? I get it from 50-60 foot away all day long.

A little walk around the corner and you find this hellebore, could there be 100 blooms maybe?

Julia's snow flakes, Leucojum aestivum! My first snow flakes, thanks to Darla for correcting me on this plant.

I took some cutting from Julia's garden on Tuesday, black fig and paper Bush (Edgeworthia}! Hope I can get something going on these cuttings. The black figs are supposed to be real tasty too.

Back in our garden the Hyacinth are getting ready. This one is one that was here when I bought the place, I think I'll have 5 new ones this year!

 Here is the Clematis armandii "snowdrift" I bought last year. It never grew at all last year, nothing!! This photo was taken 6 days ago, that new growth has grown at least a foot in the past 6 days! We intended on having it cover to back porch railing, it is now touching the railing, YEAH!

Here is our Camellia japonica 'Crimson Candles' I bought it last fall, it had nearly 100 buds on the 3 foot bush back then. On Tuesday it started opening up those blooms! What a delightful bush all these 2 inch blooms. Julia has a slightly bigger one and it was blooming like crazy on Monday when I got to work.

Last thing the veggy garden. We have been eating arugula and mustard greens all week. These were planted last fall and somehow managed to live through out the winter. Two and half weeks ago I planted Sugar Snap Peas today I found my first pea sprout. Now where is my Swiss Chard?

Julia's Hellebores

Here are some of the hellebores blooming at Julia's garden right now. I have been building a big deck and screened in porch all winter. Just a bonus to be there when these are blooming. These photos are of about 1/3 of the hellebores she has the others have not came out yet. She has promised me a few babies of these plants so I'm pretty excited.

One thing I wanted to bring up. Several people have mentioned that hellebores can sulk a year or so after transplanting them. This time last year we did not have any hellebores in this garden. I bought 3 expensive one gallon plants at the local nursery and they are getting ready to bloom. The other 10-12 plants we have were given to us and dug up  from two different gardens, all so far show signs of blooms in the future. Half out dug up plants were planted in the summer the other half were planted in the fall.

This one we dug a footer right up to it and it was partially covered with dirt for a short time, no harm done. This plant is almost 3 foot around. Likely my favorite.

Look at those pointy petals, oh my!

Very red, lots of blooms on this one!

This one was a sport I think all the other flowers around it were red. She says many of her hellebores are much redder than normal.

Many of these in one big cluster. We are planning in visiting Pine Knot Farms the local hellebore growers on March 06th during their Hellebore Festival 2010. Anyone wanting to join us in southern Virginia during the open house please let us know. We were planning on going on February 27th but figured since we have had so much unusual cold weather this year.

Testing out the macro capabilities of Meg's new camera (Coolpix S70). This is a daphne close up from the plant next to her front door. Just a few blooms so far so not aroma yet. This photo was taken from 5mm at 28mm 5mm set to 1/98 sec, f/3.9 at ISO 400.

Here is the porch I'm building there. The deck is 14 x 30 and the porch is 14 x 20. I built a shed under it as well. As you can see we still need a beaded board ceiling that will be painted haut blue and screen. The electrician was supposed to start today and the rest of the week will be too cold to paint the ceiling boards before installing them.