Around the Garden - - April 8th, part #2

 The purple pasque flower with a few iberis blossoms.   This is a very well behaved and good plant.

 The little trillium had one early bloom that has turned pink by April 8th and another later bloom that is still while.  It is nice to see this trillium expanding.  I have not seen the two trilliums in the woodland this year.  I hope they are still there.  I pull out blue bells from around them.  I hope this does not disturb them too much.

 The pink pasque flower.  The pasque flowers and the trillium are all in the same area, near the magnolia tree in the front garden.

 The arabis is always a welcome sight in the spring time.  The plants are spreading in the whole area of the strip between our driveways.  They have bulbs and shrubs growing up through them.  The tall bearded irises are now coming into bloom with the carpet of arabis under them.  I should move some of these plants into the area where I have taken out birds nest spruce and will be taking out a heather.  I plan to get azaleas to fill in the bare spots.  Azaleas will look good with this white carpet, since the bloom at the same time.

 This is a patch of blue bells in the strip between our driveways that I let grow and then take off the blooms before they go to seed.  Hopefully that will keep these blue bells from taking over.  There is a few daffodils that have finished blooming with the blue bells.

 opps loaded this one twice and don't know how to remove it.

 Tulip along the driveway strip.. do not remember the variety.

 Also along the driveway strip in front of the cedar hedge.  This is a lily flowering one that is almost finished blooming.

 Also along the driveway strip.

 Another lily flowered tulip. I should have taken earlier photos of these ones.

A gorgeous big glowing white tulip with multiple petals.  It looks great against the dark green hedge.  I had dandilions and other weeds growing along the strip and have since then weeded and trimmed back some of the shrubs.  The St. Johns worte will need to be clipped down after it blooms, as it is looking quite ragged.  I must get the ivy out of that bed also.  I am trying to get rid of the invasive plants i have in my garden.  It is slow going to get them all out.  

Around the garden . April 5 - 8, part #1

 We have a lot of hydro and telephone around our neighborhood.  This squirrel seems to live across the street in the little wooded area.  It uses this wire as its own street to go from one end of the woods to the other.  It can jump off the wire into the trees and suffer no injuries. It occasionally checks out my garden for anything to eat. Too bad it is a grey squirrel, an introduced species.  Our indigenous squirrels are red and smaller.

 I rather like the paleness of the leaves in this photo of the pink peony tree just coming into bud in early April.

 The best primulas in the primula bed in the back garden.  Its an area of the garden I have been working on for a few years.  This photo is from before I cleaned up the plants.  I removed the oak leaves and added compost, so all the primula bed plants should be doing well.  The stepping stones beside them have a nice growth of Corsican mint filling in around the stones, for a heavenly minty aroma if stepped upon.

 This frog arrived in the water garden area in early April.  I think it is a juvenile bull frog.  It is about 3 to 4 inches long.  Today I noticed there is another one .. same size in the water garden.  I have email the frog watch place, but must send the email on to another person to deal with as I received an auto email reply advising me to send it to another person in the department.  I am just as glad I did not send it onward as I now have 2 of them.  I really hope they are green frogs which are similar to bull frogs but not as big or as aggressive.  This one does not seem to be growing any bigger.  My few fish survive, but I really must get a few more gold fish of about 3 - 4 inches long.  And a couple more small ones for the deck tub.

 A gorgeous sunrise out my front window.  Sunset and view of the Olympic Mountains is screened by our tree and the power lines.  Chaos..  I rather like it. :)

 This white phal is one of my grocery store purchases on sale for $12.  It has huge blossoms after I repotted  it and fed it.  It is still in bloom now, on my light garden.  The one beside it is also in bloom.

A view of the stone path into the inner garden at the front.  The path leads off the grass path that goes between the boxwood hedges.  I am renovating the area to the right.  I have taken out the birds nest spruce (the dark green on the right side).  I expect to remove the heather to the left of the spruce, also.  They are both too big for the space.  Apparently the meter maids have trouble getting into the place to read the meter... maybe 4 times a year.  So, I have to keep this ugly cement blocks area around the meter, and not let my plants hide it.  The spruce was crowding the magnolia.  The magnolia looks better without the big spruce.  I am thinking of adding azaleas to the area, probably when the winter rains begin.  I cannot take a chance on losing them over our summer, that has become very hot recently.  

 This vase sits at the edge of the driveway and beside the grass path.  To the left of the vase you can see a bit of the grass path curving around to the top of the garden to go between the boxwood hedges.

Along the driveway from the vase to cedar hedge at the bottom of this area, I have iberis for edging plants.  The African violets invade the iberis, and actually spread all over this area.  They have made a nice combination in bloom with the iberis this year.  I have now weeded this area and cleaned up the dead leaves, weeds, and taken out the violets.  No doubt they will be back next year.  Since this photo we have had some very hot weather.  The vase was very dry and parched.  Hopefully, it got enough water the other night.
Today the sun was very very hot although it was only about 26 or 27 degrees. So, I did not go out to garden.  One of the little plants on the deck was completely wilted, so all the deck plants got watered.   I did a bit of a search on the web for why the sun should feel so hot and came up with this web site about UV  radiation.

March 27 in the front garden

 The little trillium in the front garden is now finished blooming.  I have not seen the two in the woodland yet.

 The magnolia was the star of the month of March in the front garden.  It is now finished blooming also.  I have taken out the birds nest spruce that was growing beside it and crowding it out.  I may find a couple of azaleas to fill the space.  Since I intend to take out the big heather, also, I may be getting 3 or 4 azaleas.  Probably not until the fall when the rains start, though.

 The pink pasque flower put on quite a show, as did the purple one.  They are both finishing the bloom period now.

 This hyacinth is by the front step and perfumes the whole area when in bloom.  I might remove that evergreen as it, too has become too big for its space.  I might just replace it with boxwood.

 The chocolate lily is now in the primula bed in the back garden.  It had a volunteer tree growing in its pot.  I have left the tree to see how it preforms.  I hope it is an indigenous tree.  It has willow like leaves and red bark, so it may be an osier willow.

 This shows the bark and leaves of the volunteer tree.  The leaves were just opening out in the end of March.

As I was reading the Times Colonist, yesterday, I came across this article about the Vancouver transit workers union talking about the trouble they seem to be having with their working conditions.  This is the same Union that our bus drivers belong to, just a different chapter.  Imagine that!  As per my previous post about my troubles with the bus in downtown Victoria, it seems I may have  guessed correctly that there was some Union action taking place within the B.C. Transit service.  Well, I guess we know what to look forward to this summer.