The Garden Gets Going, Too

We did a quick tour around the garden after we came home from the beach.  Things are really starting to get going.  Here is a Ranunculus that is just about through blooming already.  They color is so brilliant it looks fake; this photo only begins to capture it.  Hard to imagine that this started as simple Buttercup.

Georgia looking over the results of my project from last weekend.  The blow down of our big Tulip Poplar in Hurricane Irene tore a large hole in one of the stone walls in the garden.  Last weekend, I smoothed out the area again, rebuilt the wall, and added three small planting beds in terraces.

The Paw Paw tree flowers are developing.  Paw Paws have liver red flowers, which are pollinated by flies, fooled into thinking it's rotting meat.  This Paw Paw provided us enough fruit to make several batches of Paw Paw Lhassi (substitute Paw Paw for Mango in this recipe).

One of our "captive" Royal Ferns (Osmunda spectabilis), just coming up.  We moved these off the low ground on our back lot, where they grow native.

 A Cowslip (Primula veris).

One of our apple trees getting ready to bloom.  Some year, the squirrels will leave us some apples to eat.

Our Eastern Dogwoods (Cornus florida) are just starting to bloom.  Dogwood flowers are cool in the way their petal grow out an enlarge well after the bud opens.  All our dogwoods are native, and we either here when we purchased the lots, or have come up from seed since then.  This is a small tree in one of the front beds, so I suspect it is one of the latter.

Some of our Azaleas are starting to bloom too.  The color of this one is pretty intense.


And, oh yes, I had to mow the lawn for the first time this year.  Oh joy...