A Spring Backyard Walkabout as the Garden Bursts into Bloom!

Bright sunshine has lured me outdoors almost everyday these past weeks and weekend. Although we just had an early garden post (in February), so much is happening in the garden that more needs to be shared! Grab a snack, a cuppa something delicious and let’s check out what’s in bloom…

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Inside the Greenhouse

Would you believe it has only been two or three weeks between my first spring garden post of 2026 and now? That’s it. Crazy how quickly a garden changes!

I planted more strawberry slips in February, and sadly, I think I accidentally pulled up my asparagus plants when I pulled out one of the frozen tomato plants in January… I have NO asparagus coming up and that planter gets plenty of water, so they should be coming up gang-busters by now. Nothing…

I’ll pick up more asparagus slips this week and replant. It’ll be three years before they will be edible again… I’m so bummed! This was the fourth year and we had some asparagus to eat last season… I am hopeful that I am wrong, but I’m pretty sure I am not.

In hindsight, I should have just cut off the tomato stalk and left the roots to decompose. REALLY BUMMED! I love asparagus and last year we ate several small meals off those plants. 🙁

Such an idiot move on my part… (eye roll…) I had wondered why the roots were so long… Sooo bummed!

On the bright side, the plants I overwintered inside the greenhouse have done really well! I have been moving pots outside and will get the bougainvillea and this geranium moved out this week.

The two lemon trees are still flowering and sooo many bees visit each day! Some tiny lemons have ripened early and are falling off, some turned black. It’s something that I see happening with over/under watering and too much heat inside the greenhouse, so the plastic top needs to be removed this week.

Otherwise, the larger lemons are going for it and there are new blooms which will replace the falling ones. 🙂

Both agapanthus have been moved to their summer spots outside the greenhouse, with one on the sitting in a spot just outside the greenhouse for now. They love being crowded in their roots, so I am hoping for many blooms this year. I need to feed them a lot and that should help get them to bloom. 🙂

Little lizards are back helping control pests. I love the lizards and they love living in our compost piles and in this new greenhouse.

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Fountain search

I went by Lowe’s a couple of weeks ago and saw this faux stone fountain and I really like it. I have been looking at a fountain for our garden for a number of years but want to stay in the $200 range, which is what my last one cost ~ $240 but 20 years ago.

Am I a bit unrealistic?? Maybe there is something out there at a garage sale… This one is about $250, if I remember correctly. 😉

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Courtyard Garden Ideas

This fountain looks like it would be easy to maintain, plus it would fit into our courtyard in the backyard nicely, with the metal fencing behind it. It was always my plan to put a small fountain here in front of this metal fencing.

I could move our Vinyard Maiden out to the yard, which I have wanted to do for a while now anyway. She would be safe out amongst the roses during the summer. Maybe I can ask my husband to move her this weekend… 😀

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Alright, what you’ve been waiting for: Drum roll please!

Welcome to our backyard! The cover is off the greenhouse and the roses are just about to burst into bloom… Olivia Austin is blooming here in front of the iron fence.

Our garden is BURSTING into bloom and this year I happily got the roses times right to be ready to bloom just as the leaves are coming out on the oaks (so they wouldn’t get too shaded and not bloom well). 😀

This clematis was planted last year about this time and it died back to the ground, which I knew it would, and it has come back beautifully! I chose this one from Costco’s selection of clematis because Blades is a family name of many of my ancestors.

Ten or eleven generations back, Henry Blades was a Tory on the wrong side of the American Revolution and was granted land in Nova Scotia after the war. He is balanced out by ALL of the ancestors who were patriots on the American side. 😉

Looking it up in a Google search, nothing comes up for who Gillian Blades was, but she could be a distant relative, which is kinda neat!

Here is the view from our kitchen patio area, also part of my post on our Spring Backyard Porch with March’s Design Challenge. My squirrel buddy was outside the other morning.

This type of lamb’s ear does really well in winter, and with just a little dieback from freezes, the plant stays alive underneath really well. A quick clean up in late February (the day this photograph was probably taken) was all it needed. I need to get some more for the rest of the yard!

As the roses really come into bloom, I will share a small separate post with them. It’s lovely when they all bloom at once but I have yet to get them all to do so here in Texas. 😉 This year will be the closest to all of them coming into bloom at once.

Pumpkins have seeded themselves in the compost pile, so early pumpkins this year! Sorry, no photo of the pumpkin vine. The plant growing behind the wire is not pumpkin but a flowering vinca. 🙂

Outfront, I moved this Tradescantia and bamboo-like Nandina over on the left side of our new gate and they have done really well. The tradescantia only blooms in springtime but it is lovely!

That’s about it, friends! I hope you have enjoyed this early-to-mid-spring garden tour. And actually, spring just began officially, I bet we are going to have a really early summer season here in North Texas.

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Happy gardening,