An Easter Spring Garden Hello!

Happy spring to you all, dear friends! Just a month ago we were in the throws of snow and ice, but after cutting back plants and hoping for the best, adding fertilizer and no small amount of prayers… Then thinking that even a favorite rose bush was dead and gone, life has sprung anew!…

Grab a cup of tea or coffee and come sit a spell! I was going to break this up into two posts but may just put it all together…

Right there in amongst the crusty old stump of this rose bush, a small branch of hope emerges…

Taken just a week apart, our South Dakota Miss Kim is readying its lilac blooms and leafing out spectacularly! When leafing it happens each year, on any plant that I have been watching, it brings me such joy ~ a rebirth, renewal!! Much like as Easter comes around every year and we give thanks to our Great Creator for the gift of his Son and the cross…

I haven’t planted all of the plants I picked up in Oklahoma yet. These geraniums will be going either into one of the hanging baskets (since they can take the heat and like to be dry, anyway) or into a shallow wide pot and enjoying the backyard this summer.

The Forest Pansy redbud is beginning to bloom and I think it just needed more water to get the blooms going, so I gave it a good soak this evening after school. Now that daylight is longer, I can water in the afternoon and every plant has time to dry before dark. 🙂

A week ago the tulips were blooming like crazy! These are the mid and late blooming tulips. I’ll have to order more tulips for this next year.

I sprinkled them often with rabbit and squirrel repellant so the wildlife would leave the tulips alone. Happily, our feather and furry friends have only been digging for nuts buried in the fall. 🙂

Out front late last week the late, darker almost red tulips were blooming as the early pale pink ones faded away… So pretty!

This was my first experience, really, planting tulips and most of the 200 came up. Some I planted in terra cotta and I don’t think I will do that again. They grew much better out in the garden beds in native soil.

I used the wrong potting mix in the two big pots I set and those tulips either rotted from over watering and just didn’t do well, or the squirrels got them. The best pot of tulips I gave to a friend and she loved them!!!

Here are the first flush of tulips from early March… This group of Pink Squared and Pink Cubed were from Color Blends. I highly recommend their tulips! They come packaged well and each group of 100 was bagged and contained instructions for chilling the bulbs before planting.

The Plum Pudding Coral Bells heuchera have come back with renewed vigor after the winter storms. They are rated to -30 to -40 degrees (zone 3), so they should do well here with morning sun. Last year was my first experience with a heuchera and it fried on the back porch.

After watching a zillion YouTube garden videos all fall and winter (we got rid of Direct TV), I’ve learned A LOT about many plants including these guys! They like morning sun and to get out of the heat in the afternoon. I’ll transplant them to the front yard if need be, but the large oak tree should give them good afternoon shade all summer, as it is just beginning to do as it leafs out this week.

The Limelight panicle hydrangea is loving its home here in the new garden bed and should enjoy the same Southern exposure with afternoon shade.

It’s sooo exciting to see all of these plants growing! I have a bit of weeding to do, as you will see throughout, but even that is a pleasure after all the worry about what made it and what didn’t this winter. The nepeta is supposed to get to 24″ tall, I think, which will really fill in the back of the flower border.

The Spanish lavender that was buried in hay and wrapped under a frost tarp made it just fine! A healthy feeding a few weeks ago and two of three lavenders are blooming madly!

This guy has been blooming since early January and hasn’t stopped. I want to cut off some blooms but I hate to strip it of its beauty!

It is getting leggy, though so I guess it must be done. I’ll feed it again and see if I can get a second crop of lavender wands…

Both Dwarf Alberta Spruce are putting out new growth. They loved the cold as did the lilac and the redbud!!

Out in the compost pile, I think a few pumpkins are growing, or possibly cantaloupe since we ate one this winter! I was hoping something would grow out there. It’s really way too early for pumpkins but they might be fun to harvest in early summer! Be good for early fall filming. 😉

The Girls are wearing their crowns still. I think I’ll move the angel around to the new garden area as summer comes along.

I finally got plans to the City asking about adding a new fence and moving the fence out by five feet, adding in a new garden shed and hooking up electrical for it. We should hear back sometime this week.

Prayers for the City favoring us would be appreciated! <3 Thank you! <3 If we can move the fence out, it would open up the yard quite a bit and give room for a bigger potager garden on the Eastern side of the

And Mr. Rabbit enjoys a visit among the patio plants and another new heuchera heading outfront soon…

And last but not least, here is the new mandarin orange tree and a regular (to me) mophead hydrangea that I picked up at Marcum’s Nursery when I went up to Oklahoma for my first Covid shot.

I finally figured out how to arrange all the bricks to make a large square for a little plant patio! They aren’t cemented in, but I may do that later this summer.

Happy Easter week, my friends!

Barb 🙂