April 2nd April 10th April 19th The view is rapidly changing here in the garden! Growth everywhere we turn!

The potting bench is a little crowded these days, and I still need to start some more seeds! We have a flat of these jack-in-the-pulpits as well as more in larger containers. Last spring Chris ordered a bunch of the bulbs and they didn’t come up. The dirt ended up being dumped in a big container with other soil and lo and behold they sprouted this spring! I think it’s time we get these in the ground, though. I started bottle gourd seeds to grow along the vegetable garden fence this summer, along with luffa seeds. I’m imagining a lush fence with vines covered in blooms! I can’t wait! Sweet…

The edible onions keep attempting to bolt….they need to hold on another month or so until we can harvest them. I’m a little worried they aren’t bulbing up as much as they should be by now, but with a month or so left to go I can only hope they get their bulbing into high gear! Last year I bought a pot of chives in hopes that one day they’d find a permanent home in our herb beds. They are still biding their time at the end of the one of our vegetable beds. Out in the yard the wild onions are giving off their aroma as we walk around…

Chris grew these giant snapdragons last year and they returned this year from the roots, at least I think from the roots. The coloration of the blooms is gorgeous! A few muted maroon bluebonnets were mixed in with the blue-bluebonnets we bought. I’m still in love with the columbines blooming. I never would have thought they would have become a favorite spring flower, but they’ve proved to be a wonderful addition to the garden. The garden is almost in full foxglove mode, too. They are so striking with their height and color it is almost a disappointment we’ll have to wait two more years for them to bloom again. The…

The fig tree area of the garden is one of my favorite spots. Really, the fig tree worked out to be in the perfect location there on the side yard, fitting into the landscape perfectly. Currently there are many new plants sprouting beneath the tree, a lot of ferns, a few lilies, some different tropicals. Still biding our time for some of the tropicals to re-emerge…giving them only a few more weeks to appear before calling them toast. We’ll find something else for the spots where plants didn’t pull through. I’m ready for a balmy summer evening where I can sit out under the fig tree and read, maybe nabbing…

Back in February I wrote about the latest garden project we had going on. Well, last Sunday Chris finished it up in between mist showers by planting the azaleas we’d purchased in Nacogdoches the day before. We’d bought two native azaleas for our main flower bed from Cook’s Nursery just outside of Nacogdoches when we were there in February and kicked ourselves for not buying more. The plants were a good size and had only been $20, plus finding native azaleas can be difficult. So, since we were already in east Texas for a plant sale we went and bought five more azaleas for the back side of this perimeter…

We have quite a population of toads at our house, which is a good thing. Anywhere there’s a nook or cranny we can find a toad or two….or sometimes a whole colony as we did when we were building the beds around Chris’ man-cave. There had been a pile of wood and other miscellaneous items on one corner of the house and as we moved the debris out of the way we found a small colony of toads. We carefully carried them over to a different section of the yard where they would be able to hang out undisturbed. This little juvenile toad was hoping around the columbines as I…

Last year we planted several packets of ‘McKana’s Giant’ columbines. This year they have really put on a show for us and I’ve been very impressed with them. The columbines themselves, at least last year, went a bit dormant in the hotter part of the year, only to regrow by leaps and bounds in the last two months and send up spikes for blooming. I was pleasantly surprised with this pale blue flower when I stepped outside at lunch for one of our daily garden walk-throughs. It’s quite amazing how much we either miss or see something that changes from morning to night in the garden. Along with this hybrid…