A very busy April

 The photos are from April 5th.  The Fawn Lillies did very well this year.  They out grew the nasty bluebells and are spreading very well in the woodland corner.  I was happy to see the yellow ones spreading too.  I still need to keep after the blue bells though. 

 The plants in the bed between the woodland trail and the old garage are doing nicely this year.  There are quite a few cyclamen that are not blooming.  The leaves are decorative and evergreen so I will leave them for now.  Apparently they spread rampantly also.  The perennial forget me nots (I forget the proper name) are very pretty in bloom and the anemorella beside it is lovely with big light blue flowers.  There is morning glory coming up through the mulch from the other side of the cedar hedge, so I keep after pulling it out also.  The bleeding heart is very good this year too.

 This is the street side of the garden with the spirea, bridal veil, in bloom.  I did not clip it back to a round ball during the winter.  I may clip it again this year, as it looks quite wild.  Perhaps I will leave the long stems, on the top to grow and fall out like a veil, to see what it looks like in its natural growth habit. 

 The pasque flowers in pik and purple varieties are doing well too.  It helps to feed them compost and keep the weedy daisies, violets and weeds out of the area.  The red one is next to the cedar hedge and gets more shade than the puruple one. 

 This purple pasque flower is at the end of the flower bed next to our driveway.  This color is close to the pink magnolia tree.  You see the iberis in white that is forming a good edging row along the edge of the driveway.  The magnolia is almost finished blooming and the pink huge peony tree is just starting to open its buds.

 This racoon was across the street and up in a tree having a nap. It was quite a long reach for my Canon SX60, as it was probably 150 to 200 feet away.  It turned out not too badly.  I converted the RAW and then worked with it further in LAB mode to bring out  the colors.  More sharpening was needed too.  I may have over done the sharpening.

I actually got a few of the photos tweaked, for the creation of the August album on my old web page.  I have half of them ready to add to the photo album making software.  This was a hydrangea apera.  It has lovely fuzzy leaves, and this gorgeous colored lace cap blossoms.  Last year it caught some kind of fungus that completely finished it off.  In researching this plant disease I find that hydrangeas very easily get fungus diseases.  Not all fungicides work on any of the diseases; that is, it depends on which disease the plant has, as to which fungicide to use.  I was so sorry to lose this one, that I don't think I want to try one again, only to have it die.

Yesterday I was to the VIRAGS plant show and sale.  I found a few choice plants this year.  I have been looking for a double bloodroot for a long time and found one there.  I also got a hepatica from the the club's plant sale.  There were a few of them there.  I should have bought them all.  These little plants like to grow in moss, so of course they would be perfect for my moss garden.  The one I put in the woodland is doing fine and spreading, as is the one that I moved out of the moss. (At the time I moved it, I thought the moss was bad for it)  So, I will put this one back into the moss garden.  It tolerates lots of shade also. I have another hard to find plant for the shade garden being an epimedium x versicolor x sulphreum.  The epimedium I have in the garden is now a lovely burgundy color, which I was told is the color of the new leaves in spring.  I shall put this one into the shade near the moss, too.    I also got another lewisia for the little lewisia rockery.  I was told how to grow them to keep them alive and shall follow the advice.  They need very good drainage around the crown. -- 2 or 3 inches of rock chips or pea gravel.  The guy who was telling me this says that he used turkey scratch.  I have lots of pea gravel and he said that should be fine.  And then cover them during the winter rains.  If the crowns get wet they rot and die.  I could cover them with a plant pot up on a few stakes, to keep the rain off.  My other small lewisias seem to be doing ok and self seeding about slowly.  The daphne on this little rockery is a beautiful thing in full bloom.  Photos to follow soon, I hope.   I have two new primulas from the Cowichan Valley plant sellers.  One is amethyst and it is beautiful dark purple/red.  The other is striped victorian which is a pale blue with stripes.  There was one in the show that was huge and won a first place ribbon.  He said the one in the show had been fed to make it grow like that.  He grows his plants from seed and does not seem to believe in these over stuffed looking plants.

I have been working on the sanding down of the gate-leg table top and have now made the legs very loose and wobbly.  Yesterday, Pat fixed them for me by taking the legs pegs out their holes and adding wood glue to them.  He also added new screws to both sides of the legs to hold them more steady.  And replaced the screws on the little cleats the helped hold the legs together.  Now, I have a bit more sanding to do before filling holes, then adding several layers of stain, with fine sanding between the layers.  It is still going to look like an antique, though.  Pat did a superb job of refinishing our dining room table  a couple of years ago. 

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Posted By Blogger to My Garden at 4/19/2015 03:32:00 PM