Wooo hooo! Spring has finally arrived in my neighborhood. As long as the rains stay away, I plan on planting my potatoes and veggies this weekend. My garden space got rototilled this past week so I'm ready to go.

Bushlady: Oh, your garden sounds lovely with the tulips and daffodils and trails! I planted both tulips and daffodils one year, and they all bloomed the next spring and it was lovely! But I didn't dig up the tulip bulbs and chill them, etc., so they never came up again. The daffodils, too, I left in the ground and only a few came up the next year - our summers are too hot and our winters too mild for them to naturalize and I am too lazy to dig them up and store them, etc. However, one or two very hardy daffodils still do show up, year after year, I am hoping that these plants will eventually naturalize. Paperwhites, however, seem to have naturalized very nicely.

Darlene: Hope the weather stays dry so you can get your veggies planted this weekend. What kind of veggies are you planting?

Yesterday, I helped my gardener weed and mulch one of the six large circular flower beds in the back garden. Each is planted mostly with roses. Today, I plan to put water to the front garden.

I finally went out and trimmed the azaleas as they need to be done just after blooming. Since everything bloomed early this spring it's hard to schedule things already!

Mums need to be pinched back in June but they are already budding. My ground covers are overlapping each other. So there is more work ahead.

The roses were lovely this time. Waiting for those awful beetles to show up next.

Watered the garden, again, yesterday. It has been very hot, so, watering twice a week.

Jo, I wonder if those are the same beetles our son has (rose-chafers I think). Awful certainly describes them. One summer when I was visiting, I went round and dropped them into a soap solution, because DS doesn't want to spray poisons with DGD and her friends playing in the yard. How do you deal with them?

Bless, I hope I will be able to locate all the bulbs once they are finished and the leaves died down, as I will heed your suggestion to dig them up and put them somewhere cool until fall. I want to replant them all where they can be more easily watered next spring.

The yard is lovely, not so the bugs! DH repaired the gazebo screens and put the roof on and I washed all the chairs and table, so we can sit out there now without getting eaten alive.

The pin cherry blossom is now almost done, and I have seen chokecherry blossom, also we have one labrador tea plant which is blooming. I've found "Bird on the wing" (fringed polygala), and a couple of ladies slippers or mocassin flowers. I love these flowers that grow themselves.

The actual flower beds are a disaster and I have to get at them, but it will have to be windy or I will have to kit up in screening and repellent. The grass needs cutting but DH is now reluctant to fetch the mower out as it is stored just a few feet from a Phoebe's nest in the woodshed!

The lilac is blooming, also the bush honeysuckle. I missed these for 3 years!

Forgot to mention the lilies of the valley, that seemed to be barely pushing up one day and in bud the next! Spring happens fast around here.

I was disappointed to find that my lavender is almost dead from the winter. It may have been because of the freezing period after we had some hot weather, because there would have been no snow cover to protect it then. I cut off the dead bits, but it doesn't help that the whole flower bed is an overgrown mess. I'm not sure where to start! Really it needs to be dug up entirely and the plants saved and replanted. Not sure when or if this is going to happen!

Rain, where are you?

DH is enjoying the long handled pruner that DS got me. He uses it to reach into the raspberry/blackberry/blueberry patch to cut out dead and vicious canes.

The wild honeysuckle bush at the end of the porch seems to survive on abuse. Squirrels and birds have peeled off bark over the years, and I have often drastically pruned it to keep its branches above us on the footpath. Year after year it grows bigger and is loaded with blossoms, Right now there is a steady buzz of bumble bees among them.

I do have a problem with it later on each year, when it puts up what I think are called "witches brooms", little spikes of masses of leaves that don't look right.

My other problem bush is the highbush cranberry, which produces curly leaves. I suppose if I was not such a lazy gardener I would have sprayed it by now or something. Must look up the problem on-line.

You are all so good with your gardening abilities. This is the fourth spring/summer in my house and the biggest thing I have done is to get rid of the overgrown bushes and trim back everything else, including all the trees.

I have 2 enormous red maples in the front yard and 2 green maples immediately behind the house so have nice shade. I also have an overgrown flowering bush in the yard and 2 other trees adn a dying cherry and apple in the far back.

What I have done is gotten the old over grown boxwoods pulled, all the overgrowth trimmed and started planting reblooming things out front. The 2 front beds mainly hostas and daylillies, which I have split over the past couple years to spread across the front. The left front corner has a patch of lily of the valley, and I was able to get for free some ground cover 2 years ago that is finally growing like a weed this year in the left front bed and filling in everywhere. I just have to keep clear an area for the hostas to fill in. The right bed with the abundance of hostas adn daylillies in the center just gets mulched so easy to maintain.

I did do one foot borders around the whole house and filled in with a cedar mulch for easy lawn maintenance. Behind the screened porch out back is a long narrow bed with mulch and hostas.

I am hoping next year to start a garden. SO plans on cutting down the cherry tree as it is almost dead and the apple tree(lousy fruit) and will be drying it for use as he and his friends do lots of grilling and will use the fruit woods for smoking to impart some great flavor to the meats. This will leave a nice area in the far back left of the yard for a garden next year.

The only thing I plan to do this weekend outside is to get one flat of colorful flowers to plant on either side of the walkway to the front door.

Watered my garden pots yesterday. The clematis is just so full and gorgous this year. An abundance of flowers. This is the first year I didn't trim it back~wonder if that is the reason.
It is on the side of the garage so I have to walk around to see it.

DH is cutting the "grass". (some of it is not actually grass but it is green and hey, we live in the country and it doesn't show from the road!)

We had some rain the other night and the weather is a little cooler today. Everything is a mass of green at the back, almost overwhelming with so much growth everywhere.