Fun Flowers and Foliage: This Week in My Maryland Garden

This week brought our first hosta blooms. Although we grow hosta more for their foliage (leaves) than flowers, it's still nice to see the delicate purple and blue blooms in our Maryland garden.

 Day lilies are still going strong. I like this orange double bloom with red accents.

 Yellow and red bicolor marigold flowers.

This bee seems to enjoy the echinacea (purple coneflower). Bees have been flocking to these flowers, especially on the larger plants. Even three of my seedling echinaceas have flowered already. 

I was thrilled to see this caladium leaf popping up through the soil. The creamy leaf background with red accents is striking. I'd planted the bag of mixed caladium bulbs in late March (per package instructions) and had counted them as a loss because I hadn't seen any sign of them yet.

So this second caladium leaf makes two out of eight bulbs that bloomed. I'm hoping to see six more in the next few weeks but won't be shocked if no more pop up. I like the pink center and it's a nice contrast with the fading old fashioned bleeding heart foliage.

Hope you enjoyed this week's flower and foliage photo garden tour!

What was your favorite photo from this post? What's blooming in your area right now?

Multicolored Blooms, Seedlings, Garden Decor & More: This Week in My Maryland Garden

We've had this geranium (potted) for about a month. I took this photo yesterday (all of the photos in today's post were taken by me either this morning or yesterday) and today I moved it to a bigger pot.

Our potted African daisy is also doing well. I loved the coloring on this particular flower (yellow, lavender and the pale white petal tips).

When I was writing last week's post our yard had been obviously (and significantly) excavated. My fantastic hubby took a day of leave and spent part of the weekend mixing in 6 cubic yards of top soil and laying 11 cubic yards of mulch so now the front yard looks a whole lot better (yay, Ben!).

Hopefully when it's time for next week's post we will have replanted the front yard plants that survived the excavation (we had multiple rose casualties but. God willing, it looks like most of the day lilies and irises will survive). Because so much grass was torn up we decided to expand the flower beds and the hosta you see in the photo above will likely be relocated to the front yard. The snow on the mountain is kind of crowding it out anyway so it will be better for the hosta once it adjusts. I'm hoping to divide the clump into 4-5 smaller plants.

These Chinese character stepping stones are one of our few bits of garden decor left after our giant white rock and other decor were victim to the excavation process.

This is a Japanese maple seedling I'm hoping will make it.

 Last week none of the seedlings Ben planted in March were physically distinguishable from one another but this week we can clearly see that these are cosmos seedlings.

And these are zinnia seedlings. Ben only planted cosmos and zinnia so it's easy to tell them apart. I planted a fresh batch of annual zinnia seedlings yesterday (to fill space in the front yard this summer while we work on a long term plan).

This little fern was stuck under a pile of leaves on our shady side garden. I pulled it upward so it could get some sun and crushed the leaves around it so they will break down faster and eventually provide  nutrients to the little fern. I suspect it's a Japanese Painted Fern (aka Ghost Fern) so once it recovers it should be beautiful.

In late March I posted a photo of our old fashioned bleeding heart and it's still blooming beautifully. This week our new fringe leafed bleeding heart started blooming. I just planted it last fall so it's a tiny plant but it should eventually grow to a decent size and bloom from about this time of year to frost (unlike the old fashioned kind which die back after their spring blooming period).

Hope you enjoyed my photographic tour of my Maryland garden! May your blooms be bountiful and may God bless you!

Fresh Spring Flowers: This Week in My Maryland Yard

Spring is my favorite time of the year and this has been an exceptionally great week for flower gardening. I took this picture of our first iris bloom of 2012 two days ago just after a rain. God willing, we'll have blue, purple and yellow irises following in the next few weeks.

 A walk around the yard this morning revealed our first azalea bloom of 2012. You can see a bunch of buds promising more flowers soon. This bush is on our sunny side yard. We have three azaleas in our shady back yard and they have buds but no blooms yet.

I love violets but my husband thinks they're weeds. If you love violets please comment below so I can show him others appreciate them too and maybe he'll let more of them live!

Remember photo from a couple weeks ago when the bleeding heart foliage was just pushing through the ground? As you can see in the photo above, the bleeding heart plant is blooming freely now.

Our Virginia blue bells are just starting to flower.

My beloved husband may not like violets but he likes these purple African daisies because he bought three pots of them last week to brighten our front walkway.

This week hubby also purchased and planted this nifty fringe petaled gebera daisy. We still have a lot of weeding to do, mulch to lay, seeds to plant and more but I find when I focus on the beauty of the flowers (instead of all the work that still needs to be done) I enjoy our garden a lot more. The flowers God created are beautiful and they bring joy to my soul. May God bless you today and always!

Floral Signs of Spring: This Week in My Maryland Yard

My husband bought the brightly colored annual flowers (above) this past week and popped them in a pot to brighten our front yard.

 Periwinkle (aka vinca) are in full bloom all over the shady areas of our yard (as you can see we didn't quite rake all the leaves up yet but I think it makes the bright green stand out even more so it's all good).

This isn't technically a good photo but I like how the daffodil seems to glow. It's a cream petaled daffodil with a yellow center.

Crocuses have been blooming for weeks so I'm not sure how much longer they'll be blooming this year. We've planted some crocus bulbs in our lawn and won't mow over them until the foliage has time to die back and rejuvenate the bulbs for next year's blooms.

 Tulip foliage pokes through the soil (and the bare soil reminds me that we need to lay down some mulch in the flower beds).

Old fashioned bleeding heart foliage bursts through the soil. It won't be too long until the bush is 2-3' high and blooming with it's lovely pink and white flowers.

It really looks and feels like spring here in Maryland. I even went barefoot outside for a few  minutes today. I absolutely love spring! May God bless you this springtime and always!