First Flowers of Spring and Floral Friday Post of 2015

Purple Crocus: Copyright © Phyllis Wheeler, 2015

Happy floral Friday and spring! Spring is my favorite season and I'm so glad it's here. I hope you enjoy this first of my 2015 "this week in my Maryland garden" posts.

Thank you to those who have continued to ask for flower photos. It's great to finally have fresh flowers to share again and it sure is nice to see them blooming in our yard. The crocuses are our first blooming bulbs. I love the vibrant purple in the ones pictured above.

Burgundy Hellebore: Copyright © Phyllis Wheeler, 2015

The hellebores are our first blooming perennials.  The burgundy are my favorite but the white (two photos down) are really pretty too.

Pretty Pansy: Copyright © Phyllis Wheeler, 2015

Most of the pansies did survive the winter, although they are not as robust looking as they could be. They will probably perk back up once the frosts are over, although that could be later than usual this year. It has certainly felt like a colder than average winter.

White and Green Hellebore: Copyright © Phyllis Wheeler, 2015

I like the red freckles on the inside of the white hellebore plants.

Purple pansy: Copyright © Phyllis Wheeler, 2015

The first pansy in this post (above) was planted in the ground. This purple pansy was in our deck box. The deck box pansies don't look near as healthy as the ones in the ground but I hope they'll perk back up too.

I wish you a happy Friday and weekend and a wonderful spring! May God bless you!

Related posts:
Wheelbarrow pansies: http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-wheelbarrow-full-of-pansies-for.html
Daffodil, pansy and cyclamen: http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com/2014/03/daffodil-pansy-and-cyclamen-flower.html
Pansy and spring poem: http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com/2013/03/happy-spring-poem-crocus-and-pansy.html

Lotus Flower Photos & Haiku Poem

Lotus in the sky: Copyright © by Phyllis Wheeler, June 2013

This weekend I enjoyed a walk through the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens with my beloved husband. The lotuses have started blooming and they are beautiful.  I love how as spring turns into summer each week brings new blooms to enjoy. God's creation is amazing!

Angled Lotus Flower Copyright © by Phyllis Wheeler, June 2013

Here's the lotus haiku I promised in the title:

 Lotus Haiku

A swampy marsh sounds

boring but it's teeming with

big pink lotus blooms.

 

Young Lotus Flower: Copyright © by Phyllis Wheeler, June 2013

It seems that the flowers have the most pink just before they open. For some reason blogger isn't letting me add any regular text below the next picture so I'll close things out here. It was a blessing to enjoy the lotus blooms. I hope you enjoy my photos. May God bless you and keep you!

Related Posts:
Previous Kenilworth photos: http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com/2012/05/kenilworth-park-aquatic-gardens-photos.html
Kenilworth Flowers: http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com/2012/05/flowers-at-kenilworth-aquatic-gardens.html
Goose Family: http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com/2012/05/goose-family-photographs.html

Lotus Field Overview: Copyright © by Phyllis Wheeler, June 2013

 

 

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!

Blooming Hellebores

Today I noticed that our hellebores were blooming so of course I had to take a few photographs. Only two of our six or so hellebore plants are in bloom at the moment but it was a nice sight for January in Maryland. Normally when I first notice flowers on the hellebores there's snow on the ground but today we had spring like temperatures and blue skies that melted away this weekend's snow.

Hopefully some of my white bloomed hellebores will flower soon. Comment below or email me at lovejoypeas@gmail.com if you'd like photographs of the white hellebore flowers. I think hellebores are also called Christmas roses and Lenten roses so you may know them by another name. Hope you enjoy my photographs. May God bless you!