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.