April Showers..

...bring my favorite spring flowers.

My irises have been my faithful friends. I love them because they are so hardy! I didn't start out loving irises but they have grown on me.


This group has been with me for over 10 years. They have lived at 4 different houses with me and made it through 3 moves. I've lost a couple colors along the way but it is always hard to make sure you've got them all when you move.

When we moved to this house, these iris were lucky we even got them in the ground. My priority is always to get the daylilies in the ground first and we just didn't have much energy left when we made it to the irises. We basically just dug an area out, threw some bone meal in and planted them with the rhizomes sticking out.

This year the whites seem to be particularly hardy and are taking over. I've had this happen before when there is one color that is stronger, it will grow over the others and then the next thing you know, you only have white. So, I am labeling all the leaves. This fall I will dig them up and put all the whites in their own group.

I know. There are days when I verge on brilliance.

I've always had a weakness for clematis.

When we moved here, someone at the local nursery advised me not to try to grow clematis down here. She said they just don't do well.

But I love them and thought I'd give it a try anyways.

And look what I've got!

This is their second spring in my yard and they seem to be growing just fine thankyouverymuch!

So what's growing in your spring garden?

It's the little things that make me happy

While we were at the farm, the kids spent most of their time on the 4-wheelers. In fact, in almost every picture I took they are either on a 4-wheeler with their dad, Grandma, Grandpa, or Great-Grandpa.

There are many fields to ride through, ponds to go visit, and a gravel road to drive on down to the river. It's great fun!

During one of the rides we drove through a field where an old farm house used to be years ago. No roads to it. No foundation left. Nothing was left to show that it had ever existed.

Nothing except daffodils.

Lots and lots of daffodils!

There were at least 2 different varieties if not 3, but only one was still blooming. I asked my Grandpa if I could dig up some starts of them (seeing as how they were way back in a cow field and nobody ever saw them anyway) and he said that would be just fine if I thought they would live.

He's not a real big gardener.

And I know it's not the best time of year to dig up daffodils, but I'm just working with what I've got here.
Aren't they beautiful?

So my dad and I hopped on the 4-wheelers and rode back to the pasture and he dug up a couple clumps for me. The clumps have lots of bulbs in them because it has been many many years since they have been divided.

I am so excited!

How fun is that!?! Fancy daffodils from my Grandpa's farm. I can't wait to see what the other ones look like!

Not. Going. According. To Plan.

My favorite part of the A-Team was when Hannibal used to , "I love it when a plan comes together".

My problem is that mine is not.

The plan: eradicate and relocate the murdering vermin who sabotaged my attempts to have beautiful flowers growing in my yard. They reduced my pansies and various other blooming plants from this......

To This........

Plan A: While my parents were visiting, my dad built a rabbit trap with the help of the kids. Or maybe in spite of the kids.

The day after my parents left, the kids ran in screaming, "WE CAUGHT A RABBIT, WE CAUGHT A RABBIT!!!!!!".

They said they were playing in the backyard when they heard the door slam shut. So I went out to check. I stood the rabbit trap on it's end and with 3 excited children surrounding me, I carefully pulled open the door.

No rabbit.

We tried to use different baits but we never caught one. The kids really wanted to pull up some of my pansies as they felt this would be a sure-fire way to lure the rabbit in. Unfortunately, most of the pansies had been eaten to the ground by this point.

Plan B: The rabbits really aren't that fast. Somehow, natural selection has overlooked our neighborhood because of the apparent lack of predators. There are literally several rabbits per house. They all come out in the evenings. My kids really thought they had a chance to catch one. So they spent all their free time with their butterfly nets trapping rabbits in bushes, only to have them narrowly escape.

The Problem: They ran in last week screaming "WE CAUGHT A RABBIT, WE CAUGHT A RABBIT, GET A BOX, GET A BOX!!!!!" They actually did catch a rabbit. The only problem was it was a baby rabbit. And the problem with that is that where there is one baby rabbit.... there are sure to be more.

I was contemplating my options when the informative neighbor kid said, "Don't give him to the humane society... they'll kill him! And don't take him and turn him loose in the park, the coyotes or a hawk will eat him! He'll be safest right here in your backyard".

Great.

Thankyouverymuch for that.

By that time, my daughter was smitten by the pansy-eater. She asked if she could keep him as a pet and let him live in her room. (and yes, she is sitting in a dump truck)

We let the kids keep him in a box and look at him until after supper. We really wanted to send him on his merry way but decided that he really was too young to be separated from his mother.

Who was apparently still living in our yard.

With her brood.

So we let him go.

They have since caught 3 other baby rabbits which have all been released back into their natural habitat. (which would be our yard)

But I am still in a quandary because I DON'T WANT RABBITS IN MY YARD! The kids have so much fun chasing them that I actually wouldn't mind their presence if they didn't eat all my flowers and kill the grass wherever they left their pellets.

I'm considering ordering some fox urine powder or maybe even trying moth balls. I was also planning on having a garden this year and using fox urine around my vegetables is just not that appealing. There are several products out there to try but I hate to spend money on something that doesn't work.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Or brilliant ideas?

Because this is me, needing some brilliant suggestions.

And no, a dog is not an option at this point. But thanks for asking.

Boys, go build a snare for your Mama

We're havin rabbit stew tonight!

(yes, that is one of my beloved pansies, the third one pictured below)

Pansy Envy

Hello.

My name is Lori.

And I have pansy envy.

I have a neighbor who just put out about 500 pansies in her front yard. And I gaze longingly at them every time we drive past. In fact, my 7 year old now says as we are approaching the pansy laden home, "Mom, just don't look."

They are absolutely beautiful. Not just the color, but the sheer quantity.

But I've decided that I must move on with my life and just be thankful for the pansies I have. Which are beautiful pansies. Just not so many of them.

These are the pansies I went with this year. There are some yellows, Burgundies and some mixes. I fell in love when I laid my eyes on this particular one and I picked the rest of the colors to coordinate with it.

Every fall I buy pansies for my front flower borders and coordinating chrysanthemums for the 2 urns on my front porch.

In the Southern states, pansies are usually considered to be annuals because they are not very heat tolerant. I usually pull mine out in the late spring/early summer when they get leggy and then replace them with my summer annuals.

Which is why I don't have 500.

Because my proposed garden budget has yet to be approved.

Now, if you plant the chrysanthemums in the ground, they are usually perennial, which means they come back every year. I plant last year's mums in the backyard flower borders.

But the pansies are just so pretty that I find myself justifying buying them because they are pretty and they do last until next summers annuals go in and they are pretty much the only flowers that last through winter.

My husband thinks I should try to grow several hundred from seed next year so we won't have to spend very much and I can have as many as I want.

I'll let ya know how that one works out for me.

Daylily Tour 08

Hello! I'm so glad you stopped by!

Would you like to come around to the backyard and see my daylillies?

You would?

I'm so delighted!

I've been collecting daylillies for many years now. A lot of mine have been given to me by my Grandmother and would be considered heirloom daylillies. When I got married and acquired my own little house and my own little plot of land, she gave me quite a few.

I have also bought some. The ones that are frillier with pinks and yellows are ones that I gravitate to when purchasing. I also bought one that is an obnoxious reddish orange. I somehow love it.

A couple have been given to me by friends. A couple were at a house when we moved in and became assimilated into my collection when we left.

I am still collecting and do not know that I will ever think, "Now I have enough." It has kind of become an obsession for me.

I LOVE to trade plants and I love to have perennial plants that were given to me by friends and family. I am always reminded of that person each year when they bloom.

These have been moved twice in the the last 3 years and are getting ready to make the trek to Texas. I love that they are very hardy and easy to transport.

I have a little over 30 different varieties and somewhere close to 300 or 400 plants. It seemed like a lot more when we were planting them last February!

All of these pictured are in my collection (I promise no "they are my neighbor's but I'm still standing in my yard" pictures) and in my garden right now. I just took these pictures this month. This is the first year I have tried to document all the varieties with pictures.

Thanks for stopping by my garden and admiring my daylillies with me.
Come again any time.
I love to have visitors!