Garden Walk April 06, lots blooming!

Folks, its likely the best time of the year for flowers in our garden. We are finally getting it to what we want. OK yeah right. Part of the joy of gardening in experimentation and exploration.

Anyway there is a lot of photos to share, let me begin..

  Creeping phlox.

  Creeping phlox and primrose together.

 Creeping phlox.

 Woodland phlox.

Muscari with an honey bee!

Pansies, we have lots of different pansies, this is just one of them. Survived an 8 degree night this past winter as you can see. Planted last fall.

 Daffodil 'Hawera'

 Daffodil ' Mt Hood'

Daffodil 'Actaea' Showy and tall makes a great cut flower!

 Daffodil 'Broadway Star' one of my favorites for sure.

Daffodil 'Sailboat' These produce a lot of flowers!

Daffodil 'Sir Winston Churchill'

 Daffodil 'Quail' at least I think it is Quail.

Daffodil 'Pipit'

Daffodil 'Sound'

Daffodil 'Delibe' drop dead gorgeous!

 Daffodil 'Pink Charms' never seen any pink on this.

Daffodil 'Silver Smiles'

Daffodil 'Falconet' Nice..

 
Snow Flakes!

 Penny's Pink hellebore. Wow wow!

 Bleeding Heart, this is our newest one Meg brought back from Wilmington! Nearly 3 foot tall.

 This is a tiny Wild Bleeding Heart. About 6 inches tall.

Bleeding Heart from the front garden.

 15+ year old primrose. The oldest in our garden. Has been known to shoot about 50 stems of blooms, slow to burst this year.

 We've had this primrose 3 years, man its crazy.

I split this primrose when we planted it, the other plant looks almost as good as this one.

 Blue primrose

 Red primrose

Purple primrose.

Native anemone "Windflower"in our garden.

Our newest camellia, Camellia X 'Tiny Princess'. Meg and I visited the Coker Arboretum in March of 2010 and saw this blooming with thousands of fallen flowers covering the ground. Anyway Camellia Forest had it and I brought it home, see my post from 2010 about it with photos at 

Doggy Ramp

Everyone, Both our dogs are getting very old. Dot is 16 Daisy is 17. Daisy only wants to go out the front door, someone needs to let here out. Guess what she does not ask to be let out either, so she puddles or otherwise. Yes we have a pet door but Daisy does not like walking down 6-7 steps to get to the back yard. So the again she leaves messes by the front door and does not use the pet door. She is a very shy dog.

So I gathered up some scraps today and Meg and I built a doggy ramp today. So now both dogs are scared to death of it. I added some strips of wood to make it less slippy for them. Blocking to steps confuses them. Oh did I mention Dot is mostly blind!! Dot is the leader of the dogs, so until she goes freely Daisy won't.

 Surely we'll get them to use it. Any suggestions to get them to use it; We tried blocking the stairway and that confused them.

Our cat Valentine the mouser is in huge trouble. First Meg found a big mouse in the living room by the house plants. This mouse is very brave running around in day light. She likely brought it in the house to start with. So she's outside we bring her inside, nothing. I might add she is the best mouser we have ever had, her pancreas does not work well leaving her hungry all the time, good for mousing, bad for us the pills cost a buck a day.

So later today Meg brings me an large male Eastern Fence Lizard she found Valentine had in the house. Released him outside no harm done.... This evening I'm showered an ready for movie time, I have to chase down mouse traps, Handy Andy up the road did not have any. I hope Valentine wakes us to tell us she has caught a mouse tonight.

Are the flowers blooming early here? Yes the Dwarf Crested Iris bloomed last year on April 20th, here they are today.

Last year was our best year for these natives in our garden estimated 600-700 blooms. This year looks like maybe 200, if they get too shaded they will not bloom at all. A full three weeks earlier than last year. When they bloomed last year we still had lots of daffodils blooming, one type of daffodil is still blooming right now, the rest are done.

 These woodland phlox are in the side garden between the house and the pond. They look better than ever this year. These are I think two years old. The ones in the shadier hellebore garden barely bloom every year, for the past 4 years. Location, location and location..

Our summer phlox we weeded it today, the tallest summer phlox in enormous, 2 foot around and it reaches 5-6 foot tall. Watching the butterflies on them can be breath taking at times.

 Here is the fattest carrot we have ever taken out of our garden. We have been picking enough carrots fresh for salad about every day. Nothing like fresh carrots from the garden. Tonight we had salad with fresh lettuce, spinach, bok choy, carrots and radishes all from the garden. And we had cooked collard greens from the garden as well.

The garden is abundant with butterflies right now, lots of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, Pipevine Swallowtail, the first Spicebush Swallowtail today, a Cloudless Sulphur was visiting the columbines today. A Northern Water Snake was seen hunting along the ponds edges, second one ever seen here ever.

The bees, oh my. The nuk hopefully has a queen by this weekend, today was day 15, it takes 16 days to raise a queen . Bees choose eggs that could be as old as 3 days, so she could have emerged already. We wait another week and a half and hopefully she will have mated and is laying eggs. The past two days the bees in the nuk have been bringing in pollen. Bees usually bring in pollen to feed larva, by now all the larva should be capped. So the bees are at least hopeful of new brood. The mother hive I feed them yesterday, I lifted it and it seemed very light. Lifting a hive tells you how much honey stores there is, too light and the bees could starve.

We are still weeks away from the Tulip Poplar, out number one nectar source of the year. I think most of the maples are done, so the bees should be getting dandelion right now and what is left of the Eastern Red Bud. Blackberry blooms are very close maybe a week away, so honey should begin to store up.

Two last bits of bee news.

 First I hopefully have a cut out to do in a barn. This would be a feral hive residing in a barn, I'll take the bees and comb and put them in a hive here.

Second new bees are arriving on April 14th, Meg and I have a very cool new hive we are working on. This hive is a modified Kenya Top Bar Hive. I customized it with a screened board board that one can insert a sticky board for mite testing. It also will have a window so we can see inside, unlike any window you have seen on a hive. Best part Meg has beautifully painted it.

Hellebore Doubles & Daffodils

Guess I've gone a bit crazy, swamped with work and so much going on. Bees arriving on May 01, just can't do it all. Yet it rained yesterday morning and I could not build the screened porch I'm working on. So I drove the 75 minute drive to Pine Knot Farms. Not much time to look around I picked out 10 new plants. The largest one has 4 flowers with seed pods developing.

1 gal Helleborus x hybridus Pine Knot's 'Southern Belles' Double Pink
1 qt Helleborus x hybridus Pine Knot's 'Southern Belles' Double Picotee
1 qt Helleborus purpurascens from Hungary
 3- 4" Helleborus x hybridus Unbloomed Seedlings best darks from Pine Knot 'Southern Belles'
2 - 4 " Helleborus x hybridus 'Double Queen' UK originated by Elizabeth Strangman
2 - 4 " Helleborus x hybridus 'Double Vision' German originated strain

This is the gallon sized double pink, see the seeds developing. So the rest will be mystery blooms in the next year or two. Shame the blooms have faded already, the true beauty of this bloom was a month back.

 Here are some of our new daffodils. This is Broadway Star.

 Pink Charms yes "pink' charms. I don't see any pink!

 I think this is Delibes, stunning isn't it?

 

This was in a mix Meg bought. I think it might be Fruit Cup. These are tiny not even 8 inches tall.

 Bleeding Hearts

Did I say pink a few photo back, this is pink phlox and a Pink Flamingo.

Oh and some local events here in Durham, NC this weekend.

The Seeds Pie Social on Sunday, you donate $10 and you get to visit their urban garden and you get coupons for 4 slices of pie donated by local stores and restaurants.

Durham Hosts "Get Your Grass Off Gas" Events April 9 & May 14Trade in your old gas powered mower for a discount on a new electric model.
I heard one hour of mowing grass with a gas mower is like driving your car 200 miles the emissions it produces. I also read that Americans spill 17million gallons of gas a year filling mowers and lawn equipment!

We are going to the Pie Social. We already have an electric lawn mower and are not Durham residents.

If I can manage it I might join on a butterfly field trip on Saturday to Orangeburg, SC to see the Goatweed Leafwing butterfly. Never seen this butterfly, I have seen the Tropical Leafwing(in Tx) which is much more rare.

Whoa, it was a hot spring day!

Today I think it hit 90 degrees here, boy was it hot! The dragonflies finally appeared! I was driving out the drive and I saw about 12-15 of them chasing a hatching of small bugs. I got out and IDed Stream Cruiser, Blue Corporal and Common Basketail. When I got back later all were gone. Below the pond I saw a forth species of dragonfly but did not get the full ID it was one of the two sundragons.

For the past three nights American Toads have been calling all night. I want to go and look for them soon, when I get the time.

Anyway here are some of our latest bloomers in the garden.

 Clematis Armandii  'Snowdrift' I picked this up last year at the Durham Garden Center, it has grown at least 3 foot this year. Stone Brothers has a bunch of them today, all bloomed out. I've not picked up the strong fragrance this year.

Our Bleeding Hearts.
Been drooling over Catherine's Bleeding Hearts. 

Here above and below is Mount Hood daffodil. This one started out with the yellow cone as above and it  fades to a pure white. The two earliest ones have turned all white but look bad from the rain we had the other night.

Miniature daffodil Tazetta Canaliculatus

These are 4-5 inches tall! I have been seeing swallowtail butterflies attracted to them too.

Here is another Tazetta daffodil Golden Dawn
These are 12-14 inches tall and I wish I'd planted more of these!

Here is a daffodil 'Golden Echo'

Baby Moon with an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail enjoying it!

Another Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on our creeping phlox.

Something I been waiting to see for the first time Muscari 'Golden Fragrance"
Not sure if it will get more yellow or not.

Could not resist this shot of crocus 'Pickwick'