Marvelous May

 This is a Persicaria Bistorta 'Superba' that grows in the back garden border under the western red cedar.  It is said to be invasive but mine has taken many years to get to this size.  I suppose competing with the tree roots keeps it in check.  I really like how it looks.  The flowers last a long time too.  When there gets to be more of them I will be able to use them in bouquets for our dinner table.

 I have been tweaking a few more photos from the CanAm meet last year.  I am loading them to my megashot account where I keep the car stuff.  I might have about one third of the photos finished.  This one was taken out behind the Air Museum  shooting over a runway and back to the mountains. 

 I was playing with layer masking to change the back ground of this Orchid  photo that I took at the orchid show and sale.  Not a great job, and it took ages to try to get the masking done properly.  I must review tutorials on how to get this done.

This is the background that was in the photo, except that I tried to take out a winners ribbon and some of the winning plant, out of the top left corner.  Not a great job of cloning, as the bottom left corner does not look right.

I have had a couple of very good days out in the garden to get quite a lot of things done.  I removed the daylillies  that were by the neighbors sidewalk/garbage cans.  I put about 12 bags of the plants out at the curb for people to take away for free.  There are only 4 bags left.  Its good to see them go to people who appreciate the plants.  I put the left over daylillies around the garden:  some in the woodland, a couple by the bamboo, one in the rose bed. I had left some under the deck and planted them under there.  I also had a piece of the white rhodo that had rooted and I put it under the deck as well.  Some time ago I had moved a little hebe under there and it is in bloom.  So, now I know that I can get more of that wonderful plant around the garden too.  I started cutting out the straggly bush with the white berries.  It is spreading all over that corner and needs to be taken out entirely.  I cleaned up that whole border along that side of the house.  I will eventually get the area under the deck done.  It is currently growing moss and ferns, and a few other shade loving plants.  It is starting to look pretty good.  I will make a sitting area under there and add more evergreen plants to fill out the privacy screen.   I want the sitting area to have a view of the pond, so I may have to move a delphinium out of the vista.
I was losing a lot of water from the pond and thought it might have been from the waterfall.  So, I put a piece of pond liner down the waterfall and rebuilt it by moving the rocks around.  I have put the moss back on top of the rocks that cover the edges of the liner.  It looks really good now and needs pictures taken.  There does not seem to have been water loss overnight.  The moss might wick some of the water out but it should not be very much.
The spring bulbs are mostly finished blooming.  The rhodos, azaleas, lilac, wisteria, some irises, lupine and others are in bloom.  The plants I got for the newly made over part of the vegetable patch into the cutting garden are all surviving.  This gardening is a very rewarding hobby.