More April in the Garden

 This is one of the thrifts on the front little rockery.  A very good plant, but I should replace them when they get older and start to fall apart.  There are quite a few more choice alpines in this area.  This is the season for them.  Hope to get out and weed the area, soon.

 The white hellebores are spreading into a large clump under the deck.  They are easy to keep in check, though.  Here you see some of the moss garden.. it too, needs to be cleaned up.  The moss is spreading quite nicely.

 This combination of the corsican hellebore and the fern leafed peony is excellent.  It sits in front of the west coast planter.  Both plants bloom at the same time.  The surrounding alpines are thriving under this deciduous tree that leafs out late... all in clay with leaves falling on them in the Autumn.. everything alpines do not like.  :-))

 This is not a great photo of the dark hellebore by the back steps.  The primulas are in front of it and the rhodos.  The ferns and things under the rhodos need to be weeded and thinned out too.

 This is one of the photos of the heavy traffic on the Yangtze.  They seem to grow canola in every available bit of ground.  There was actually a lot of smog and the sky was not quite this blue.  It hurts my eyes just to look at the real smog in the photos, so I gave them a bit more blue sky using exposure adjustment in photoshop. 

This is one of a few more photos I managed to get processed from our trip to Carlsbad Caverns in 2007.  Amazing place. 

I was out to the garden for a few minutes.  I got a bit of weeding done.  I was so pleased, yesterday, to find that one of my trilliums in the woodland area has come up.  The leaves look a bit ragged.  I wait for the other one.  One of these trilliums had 2 huge blooms last year, and now I have this pitiful showing, this year.  The little one at the front is almost finished.  It is turned red.  It has 2 flowers this year. 

We had a salad with a few leaves of the swiss chard, some dandilion leaves, chives, lemon balm, sage, and then the pecan halves, strawberries and feta cheese with balsamic vinegrette.  Was surprisingly good.  I made a rhubarb and strawberry pie.  The rhubarb has nice big leaves this year, but the stems are still pathetic.  I did manage to get a cup and a quarter of rhubarb for the pie; which is really very good.

I am slowly getting over this cold, but seem to be sleeping a lot. 
The last report I had from my site meter reader says I had an average last week, of 99 hits a day!  Many google bot views..presumably in response to searches.
Looking for the place to add tags... guess they are now called labels.. ok, fine, that works, I think.

April in the Garden

 Bergenia Cordifolia had some nice blooms earlier.  Then a couple of days ago I noticed the blooms were cut off, as though some one had taken them off with a scissors or a pruner.  The leaves are looking pretty nice, except that something is taking big chomps out of them  There are more alpines blooming in this little rockery area at the front.  Photos soon, I hope.

 The beautiful white daffodil is a new one I planted last Fall.  Wish I saved the name of it.  It is in the back in the woodland area.  The trilliums should be blooming in front of it, but they seem to have disappeared this year.  Could it be the compost I put on them?  They were doing so very well last year.

 The arabis in the container and along the driveway strip is doing very well this year.  It looks so good in the spring and has a long bloom period.  Then the leaves are ever green.  An easy very nice plant.

 I was disgruntled with the performance of the contest on Megashot and felt inclined to express my opinion.  This little dog was fiercely defending his doorstep in Tongli where we went for lunch and a sampan ride in the canals.  I added the hydrant... which will be going into my collection of hydrants for my web page someday. 

This is one of the photos from an evening's entertainment on the ship.  The costumes and lighting effects were stupendous.  Of course it was all in Chinese, so we had to make up our own stories... although, the MC, Aaron did provide a bit of an explanation at each set. 

This morning I was greeted in my email by a notice of some spam on my 'free' blog on my webpage.  I had to search around about how to access this 'easy' blog and finally got to it.  While I was there I removed over 100 spams that had been languishing on it.  No doubt it will be filled up again in no time.  It is called Out on a limb and since I was there I managed to do a post to it, as well.  I see GoDaddy is using this free blog for advertising.  I don't see any revenue from it.  I might dump the thing, next it gives me bother.

Now, today I find that Blogger thinks it is doing me a big favour by improving this blog.  Well, I don't see a lot of difference.  Just enough to confuse me.  I have no idea why they need to make us change things every second minute.  ... more bother.

I am finally getting over my stomach problems and this vicious cold I have had.  I am reading pocket books voraciously.  Even thinking about going back to hard copy of my garden journal.  It was relaxing to write it up and was easy to keep track of plant names and expenditures.  I have a garden journal on this computer... but have not kept it up, either. 

In some ways this infernal machine makes things easier but it also seems to add more and more things to do!! 

Our group from the trip have a private album on photobucket where we 'share' our photos.  So far I have 61 added and I am only adding a fraction of what I took.  Others have hundreds added ... no processing, just upload.  So good shots, actually, too.

April in bloom

 We returned from our trip to China on the 16th of April.  The magnolia tree is magnificent and very fragrant. 

 Last Autumn I planted a row of muscari along the front strip of grass in front of the crocus field.  I thought they would bloom at the same time and the muscari would be the border.  As you can see the crocuses are finished blooming.  The muscari will spread quickly, though, I think.

 The two pasque flowers are in bloom and looking good.  All of the beds need to be cleaned up and the weeds pulled.  The daffodils are finishing up and the tulips starting.  I have more photos of the garden  to process.  It is all looking pretty good.  The little rockery is slowly coming along.  I have room for maybe a couple more plants, but hesitate to get more right now, as they need to be watered carefully the first year in the ground, and our summers are so very dry.
The pump on the pond's waterfall has been shutting itself off.  I use the reset button to turn it on again.  I guess this is not too big of a problem as I can turn it on when I am out there and enjoy it, otherwise no one else is seeing it anyway. 

This is my best shot of the Great Wall of China.  We had quite a busy trip with many steps up hill and down.  Our ship for the 8 days on the Yangtze was not quite up to Uniworld standards, but we survived.  By the last day of the 18 day trip I was not so perky and well ready to go home.  We have our days and nights mixed up and are still getting them sorted out.  It will be some time before I get any more photos processed.