May in the garden

The star magnolia and the other one are in full bloom.  The area of the woodland beside the garage is at its best right now.  The path needs to be weeded.  But this area of the woodland is looking pretty good.  There is the bleeding heart, the cyclamen, honesty that self seeds every year in purple and white, the perennial forget me not which has terrific foliage, and the anemorella, which is covered with delicate blue blossoms.
Yesterday I spent about 4 hours out in the garden.  I moved the grass.  I did a bit of weeding in the moss garden, but it will need more attention.  A lot of the pea gravel seems to have disappeared from the dry stream, but not under the deck.  Very strange.  It will get refurbished when I get to this area to clean it up.  I did a bit of rearranging of the stones of the waterfall.  This waterfall is becoming more mossy.  The big work of the day was to mow down the edges of the st. john's wort along the strip between Shaunna's place and ours.  Then I swept up all the debris.  I have a heaping load of dirt and leaf mold that I am saving by the old compost bin, to be put on the woodland when I am finished cleaning it up.  This effort has given Shaunna and I more space on our driveways.  I have yet to cut back the Virginia Creeper and more of the St. John's wort.  It will all be mowed quite low and I am sure it will look very good this summer, after its pruning.  I finished digging out weeds along this strip and took a wheel barrow load of them to the green bin.  I need a sunny day so I can paint the wild morning glory .. a very rampant invasive weed .. with roundup.  This is an ongoing battle, as the people on the other side of this strip have never controlled the plants on their side. Shaunna and Gerald are going to be doing some work on their back yard.  I hope it included a retaining wall where their fence is falling over.  I assured her I would be quite happy to pay my half of the costs when they decided what they were going to do.  All of this vigorous sweeping seems to have given me a very sore wrist.  I put cold packs on it for a while after I got into the house.  It is still sore today, so I have taken the day off.
The world wide weather seems to be one crisis after another.  Japan had a huge earthquake awhile ago, that took out one of its nuclear power plants.  I believe they have it under control now, but am afraid to look.  There has been horrible flooding in Australia, and now some on the Canadian prairies.   Violet windstorms in Southeastern US, and terrible snow storms in eastern Canada.  I shall have to re-read that book called Climate Wars, again.  Its all pretty scary, when you consider the power of these earth movements.  We have been most fortunate where we live... just a late Spring.
Our Federal election is over and we have a Conservative majority in the house, with Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.  The first Green party member of parliament was  in the Saltspring riding.  Elizabeth May has made history!  A week late for May Day, but there she is!  More good news for us, is that our Vancouver Canucks are doing very well in the playoffs for the Stanly Cup.  There has been some very exciting games that go into overtime... good hockey!!
The Prince of Wales is wed.  It seems to be a very big thing.  People in Victoria went to the Empress for a 2:00 am breakfast to celebrate the once in a life time occasion.  More in the news... Osama bin Laden was killed by the US Seals when they raided a compound in the mountains of Pakistan.  From a book I read about the origins of these terrorist groups... this mountainous area has long been a stronghold for them.  Some of these groups have their roots in the time of the British control over India.  Sometimes it seems we reap what we sow.
On a happier note, my blog is again registering high eighties hits, and climbing. 

African Violets

This is a RAW conversion of a quick shot I took of some of the African Violets in my light garden.  This was to test the upload from my camera to the computer by directly connecting camera to computer.  This is necessary because the little drive on my tower cannot handle cards with a large amount of data.  So, that works, and was not the problem, with the computer it seems.
I spent some time getting acquainted with the settings for my screen and find I need to be at the highest recommended resolution setting.  I am baffled by the thing making me choose a landscape or a portrait setting.  I wonder why I cannot just view every photo as it has been taken, without this distortion.  I am using my old screen and not the new wide screen.  I updated Windows and all seems to be ok so far.  EXCEPT, now my speakers do not play.  They are plugged in, so far as I can determine.  Its not a media player problem, as the program runs but there is no audio.  I tried to plug my earphones into the front of the tower and the plug in is rejected.  If I force the plug to stay in I can hear the music.  So Trevor will have to come back and listen to the music!!  I am finally learning how to get the resolution, size of print and icons to a good size.  Windows 7 is fine... I don't see where the big learning curve is to use this OS.  There are so many things I want to spend time with on it now.
We had quite a lot of rain last night.  Looks like an inch in the rain gauge.  I had the outdoor lights on and the indoor ones off after dark and was looking out the front window at the garden.  It was really lovely, with the sparkling raindrops and shadows.  I did not attempt a photo, the window had rain drops on it. 
The sky seems to be clear at the moment, so the garden is calling me. 

Waiting

A photo from our trip to the US SW.  This is in White Sands desert.  Its amazing how much vegetation there is and how the plants adapt to their conditions. 
Tomorrow I should get all my stuff back.  My new hard drives seem to have had some kind of flaw.  I will have new ones tomorrow.  This is my techie's best treatment for the problem.  He tested my old hard drives, but they passed all the tests.  And yet, when we went to clean up the drive the program he used could not get the job done.  So, the tests are not always right.   Poor guy, he doesn't know I am an alien.  I seem to have these detrimental effects on all things magnetic.  I am going to keep using my old monitor as the wide screen HD was making me crazy.  I could use both, if I had a wider desk.  Right now, I would need to uplug one and plug in the other if I want to watch movies... yeah right, like I have time to watch movies. 
I spent 3 hours in the garden today under a cloudy sky that was threatening rain.  I got quite a bit of cleaning up done in the bed along between our driveways done.  I dug out weeds and moved some of the dirt to the beds on the otherside of the driveway.  I have cleaned  from the end of the cedar hedge to the telephone post.  I next need to clean up the Virginia creeper that goes up the post, and the St. John's wort that surrounds this creeper.  My green compost bin is full, so any more clippings and weeds will need to be added to next month.
I made a start on the woodland garden cleanup.  I have weeded out the iris bed.  It needs some fine tuning yet and the addition of compost.  The beds along beside the garage on both sides of the sidewalk need more attention, too.  The tulips I planted last Fall are up and nearly open.  There is bird seed weeds in this bed. I will have to ask Andy to stop feeding the birds over the beds, unless he wants to weed them.  Dammit!
The woodland along the other side of the garage is looking terrific.  The plants just thrive when I add compost to them.  I currently have only 3 bags of compost left.  I am using some to fill the pots I have up on the deck again.  So far I have the butterfly garden in one, the tulips and basil in another.  I have a Japanese quince in one, but am not sure if this will survive.  I added the parsley into the same blue pot it was in last year. 
I seem to be waking up at about 5:00 am every morning.  I set at my front window and watch the birds and other critters in my front garden and across the street.  We have quite a lot of birds ... lately the Alaska robin pair have been in the front, and a pair of ruffous sided townhees.

I am reading another book by Phillipa Gregory about Mary Queen of Scots.  It interesting.  This is a different twist to the story.